Inside a Liquid Mirror Vortex in Slow Mo - The Slow Mo Guys

hello i'm gav i'm dan we're the slo-mo guys a while ago we made a video where we filmed gallium in slo-mo a very interesting element looks like a mirrored liquid very similar to mercury except it won't kill you when you touch it or breathe near it that's very useful actually yeah it's such a weird material isn't it it's uh it melts at hand temperature yeah so it melts about 30 degrees celsius and that's about 85 degrees orange since i've been standing here this was solid but it's been in my hand it's turning to liquid slowly i thought we could put a load of it in a blender put the camera on the robot with this probe lens and drop it in so that as the the gallium dips down in the middle we end up inside a swirling liquid mirror there's one thing that i see a problem with there yeah um gallium actually eats metal yeah right doesn't it like just annihilate aluminium yeah eats into aluminium i think it forms some sort of alloy that makes the aluminium crumble to pieces and it's stained glass as well and unfortunately this is an aluminium lens with a glass front obviously so this is potentially going to be very hazardous for this lens if any of it gets on it not very sensible then is it yeah also i think it eats steel eventually and the blend is made of steel so we're on a clock to make this video before start blending and nothing happens all right dan while you've been heating the gallium i've come up with this i see you've been busy at work what i like about it is you've got you know professional grade lighting three lights a commercial grade robot holding a 4k vo phantom yeah you know and some masking tape and a bag well in all honesty i'm not sure which parts of this setup are made from aluminium so uh we've put the robot in a dress the camera in a bag and taped the lens up and as you can see in one of our tests here some gallium has already got on there okay so this is where the blender full of gallium will go and i've programmed a move a pretty simple move it just comes straight down into the space where the gallium used to be because of the vortex hopefully that'll be a little bit lower than where it starts it's going to do a focus pull on the surface as it comes down and then because the vortex will have sunken the gallium in i'm going to do a second focus pull to move down so you start you start sort of looking further into it then i'm just going to pull the camera back out just in case it starts getting splashed so uh the final move is more of a safety move but it'll be usable footage as well pretty sweet you know in theory careful not to trip here that would be an absolute disaster just yeah and then clock slightly clock oh sorry okay go sorry got my eyes so bright i'm like do you want a slightly different choice of language poopoo poopoo oh here we go into the goop it's weird when there's almost there's like big areas of reflection and then it goes almost there's so many reflections that it doesn't look reflective almost yeah it's like gloss matte oh there it like it it seems to vibrate and and do that on and off doesn't it look it's a really shiny bit wow it looks like we're just in it it's like how is it not on the lens oh that was a fat there's some moments in it look at there was like a whole bit diving into another one it looks like you're going through some sort of like space vortex in a multi like a metallic universe yeah highly recommended to not drink this smoothie oh i really like that i'm glad it came back out because it's a little bit too much there yeah like i was getting sucked in i was like yeah i wonder how long it would have to be able to watch it without getting a headache you can actually tell in the highlights which light is which like the reddish tint you've got some like a little bit of aberration the red ones are the big lights and the greenish tint is the uh the nightcore that's interesting and because of the reflections it's just everywhere yeah uh i think let's do it again maybe a bit of a 90 degree shirt all right wow all right easy b red light red light sorry all right i'm gonna count you down wait wait good call three two one go [Music] all right flip how are we looking up there goggly [Music] oh it's just amazing how close it gets to the lens on all sides without caking the lens and so i just love this lens so much i think it's my favorite lens that we use just allows us to get like slightly unique footage yeah so wow in it oh that was a cool bit that was a bit that flung out some gallium did you see that we got like a perfect in-focus look at why it gets sent sometimes do you know the flag of the isle of man [Laughter] you know what i mean right i might be chatting absolute rubbish here yeah but i think it's like these weird like bent these three bent legs didn't expect their reaction when i asked you no i just didn't have any uh idea okay for this one we're going to use an even brighter light it's uh this bright oh 100 000 lumens and there that way [Applause] and that way i can stop this probe lens down all the way to f44 okay stand clear here we go cut oh make sure that didn't go on anything metal no it didn't it just flopped onto the background in the table but that was a that was a chunky flop the extra light here allows us to get more depth of field which means we're in focus deeper into the vortex oh looks like a damn time hole doesn't it like half expecting a tiny little tardis to come sailing through we should just get a little keyring and just lob it in not an aluminium one no okay we're going to run a very similar move we've now got the camera end mounted so the robot's holding the camera from the back and doing that will allow us to add a roll so we're going to do a complete 360 rotation so it's going to spiral down into the blender and hopefully not take it out ready yep [Music] manually get it out there oh that's really weird now because you've started your move and it's wobbling so we're going in look at that bottom there the bottom is spinning faster than the oh look at that like middle bit come up the bottom is spinning faster than the top obviously and you can see it all the way down it's like it speeds up the further down you get yeah makes it look really weird yeah i feel like we're just absolutely wrecking this guy hang on a second i'm just getting dizzy hold on are you going to throw up yeah oh my goodness i think it's become un-mirrory it's like frothed up we've basically foamed it up is what's happened we've foamed the galley we've cappuccinoed it yeah we've made a gallium cappuccino what we've got off this probe lens yep because it's a very dark lens when on a much faster lens and got colored lights involved oh turn off the big boys turn off the big boys try and get an exposure and we won't be able to go in as deep but i think the color reflecting off all different parts would look amazing i agree yeah all right well after some time and a lot of setting up we uh potentially have the most elaborate lighting setup for a blender full of gallium in history so yeah it's a nice blend of light okay i've just changed the auto exposure so now we can see the colors these are titan tubes i'm basically doing the whole color wheel around the gallium which gives an incredibly psychedelic effect on the inside look at that that is madness you almost just don't know what you're looking at yeah it looks completely wild doesn't it yeah it's gonna be quite an operation really i've gotta start the blender gotta put a cover on it remove the cover pick the lights up go in with my colors you've got to start the robot you've programmed to do your move yep then you've got to run in with your colors with a little second delay or so yeah and then we've got to hold them like this they're pretty heavy while the robot goes up and down and the gallium is blended it's a absolute operation [Laughter] i hope it's worth it i hope the footage is good we've also changed lens there's no way these lights are bright enough for the probe so we're now on a much faster lens right there oh even the lens looks cool look at that you can see you can see all the reflection of the lights i know we're still somehow a thousand frames a second obviously we can't go in as far yeah you've just changed lens and it's made it so much different hasn't it ready go that was it did it oh jesus wow oh my god getting like our make from lifting these things up you were rapid there i was in there weren't there you were wrapping oh i didn't think it was possible for it to be more psychedelic right what you've done there oh man is create like a trip basically look at it that is madness it's delectable and gnarly at the same time you know when when heimdall whips the bifrost open yeah yeah you got like the oranges and the stuff on the on this side and you've got the blues on that side your color wheel worked pretty well this is actually really interesting because the oxidization of the gallium is causing a more matte finish the light is bouncing off that differently to how it's bouncing off the still very molten silvery finish so we're almost getting two reflections of two different colors in the same area of the galleon oh look at the best the mess is differently colored as well oh yeah you can see that all the this is the blue light oh wow rainbow peas oh look there you go all the pieces that are flying out now are getting like multi-colored bits all over yeah oh that's amazing this shot was actually one of our test shots that at the time i didn't think was any good until i just put it in the edit and did a color grade on it and it's actually quite good though the gallium was still very runny and shiny and i'd taken the frame rate down on the camera from a thousand to 250 and completely opened up on the shutter just to get as much light in as possible but i think it turned out really well dan's holding the red and blue lights and i eventually make it in there with a green and this combination of colors just reminds me of oil on a road would have been good for the opening titles of the world is not enough or something that is so cool looking isn't it it looks it looks awesome it looks like the t-1000 sneezed in a nightclub [Laughter] terminator just flung pepper at the t-1000 and then his weakness well i love that it was great i mean it was a hell of a complicated set to film what was essentially just a blender yeah i feel like back in the old days we would have just filmed a blender oh yeah the blender would have been on a bin it would have been on a ladder leaning in a string yeah exactly yeah it was quite an overly engineered complex setup but i think it really was worth it because without this lens we wouldn't have been able to get all the way in and we would want to pull focus on you know like a couple of mil away yeah and that was what made it i think it was also really cool how the robot could focus all the way down and like change focus like and perfectly straight you'd have never been able to do that no offense i definitely wouldn't i mean we tried with the sugar cube didn't we yeah yeah one oh do one no two what it's hot in my shoe everything's hot and i was like we need motion control now we've got it well hopefully you enjoyed that mesmerizing footage i think that would have looked quite good on a tv yeah if you did fall over while you're watching it like i almost did we'll be able to tell especially if you're using your phone because it should be a jumbled garbage of letters you just looking at your phone all right well hopefully you enjoyed it make sure you subscribe if you like slow-mo we've got a second channel we've got some t-shirts also comes gallium free we sell them without the gallium on and we also have some other videos that you can watch because we've been doing this for way too long here's one see you next time

Channel: The Slow Mo Guys

Views: 1,688,444

Keywords: slomo, slow, mo, super, motion, Slow Motion, 1000, 1000fps, gav, dan, slowmoguys, phantom, guys, HD, flex, gavin, free, gavin free, high speed camera, the slow mo guys, 2000, 2000fps, 5000, 5000fps

Id: cT9OZtOgtjk

Length: 14min 50sec (890 seconds)

Published: Tue May 31 2022