Some slow-motion microscopy demos showing a phonograph needle, and discussion on the challenges of getting those shots. Applied Science's video: • Electron microscope sl... Music: From Russia with Love by Huma-Huma
Arg! You beat me to it! The last time I tried this I melted my record and the microscope lens got way too hot. Fantastic footage, I'm glad you got it to work!
Man, the amount of effort you put in to this is is impressive on so many levels, you deserve more than the mere like I can give you, thank you, so much.
Electron microscopes kill / modify the sample being viewed and should not be used in medical settings. It is possible to create a live culture microscope which can observe even a virus in its living state. Invented originally by Royal Raymond Rife. Even Universities do not have the equipment which I am familiar with. Its actually quite pathetic especially in 2023. Not worth a $190,000 tuition in the slightest. Get better equipment that can study LIFE and smash those electron microscopes. They shouldn’t even be allowed to exist because it makes too many experiments invalid. Minds = Blown
This is the best RU-vid video of a magnified LP record playing. Interesting to see how the stylus starts clean and then gets lost with dust and particles. Also, the grooves are all over the place. Thanks!
A beam splitter would halve the light intensity going to the sensor, since the other half would get reflected back to the light source. Also, I don't think lightning through the lens is ideal unless you're filming a surface perpendicular to the beam.
Hello Mike, you pulled out of the DNA machine this filter which blocks only the laser light wave length, would this not be suited for illumination of the stylus through a beam splitter and filtering out the laser light?
I agree. It would be more interesting to see the actual track synchronized w the music. Having been brought up w Hi Fi it’s amazing that they ever came up w this. I’d love to see how quadrophonics system worked. I liked the part where the needle skipped the groove a few times.
Cool stuff! Your records are really dusty though, and the stylus is collecting lots of rubbish all along. Maybe clean them first? Also you might want to adjust the weight and the anti skating, as the needle is jumping quite a bit on the grooves...
Thanks. :) You've made a great deal of service for all the DJ's who knew already how it all works but had this need to see it zoomed and in slow motion. :) Cheers!
Have you tried burning magnesium (ribbon for example) as a source of illumination? Yes, it is short term, but often times short term is all it takes for high speed filming.
Also it would be cool to compare a 12" 45 with one of those ultra slow voice- only recordings for the blind (to show the steeper and more shallow angles of groove movement. This really goes to show the wear and tear the record and stylus go through.
Holy crap! This was extremely interesting! Thanks for all your hard work! And that small light is just insane! Where can you get them? Thanks, I will subscribe! Keep up the good work!
You can see how much material its wearing away everytime you skip the needle. And even just following a concentric groove, its dragging and taking some vinyl with it occasionally. Easy to see how a record wears out.
Great job! For your lighting issue you would benefit from using an inline illumination setup. As you mentioned the NA of microscope objectives is small, so that cone angle of the reflected light that makes it through the rear pupil of the objective lens is small also. If you could I'd recommend you use an infinity corrected objective lens instead (a long working distance version), and use a beamsplitter & tube lens arrangement. Even with your existing finite tube length objective, at 4x magnification you might get away with mounting some LEDs around the edge of the objective lens for improved illumination.
Real late comment:Just agree with all other: Great work and vid! I liked the very last part in which you see how much the actual record is wobbling and how hard the needle suspension must work in sub-sonic region. This might be an explanation to why skating can in worst case get grip on needle/cartride and skip it (inwards). And long before that we have audible distortions.
That is very very cool, thanks for taking all the time to set this up. I thought the record player grooves were vertical, not horizontal. Now I know...
You're not completely wrong - the needle moves up, down, left and right in a 45 degree "V" so it can play stereo by using the two axes. A needle that can only move left or right can only do mono (unless digitally encoded with stereo data!)
it is intriguing to see how difficult it is to photograph things at the microscopic level. I had never known that so much light was needed. Nice video. I also love the music played. What is it called and who wrote it?
That is some very nice footage. Would it be beneficial to use an infrared filter with that lamp? It should help a bit with the heating; xenon has some big spikes in the 800-1000nm range.
1:09 What are those white chips that get thrown off the stylus or the record? Are they little flakes of vinyl being cut off the record as the needle skips?
Listening to this with headphones scared the crap out of me! I thought MY 3d printer had somehow turned on and was rouge printing lol. Cool video other wise.
Plz for your next cam includ a fine tuning stand and lens for a microscope objective. I desperately need this for some of my electrical, crystal, and magnetic slides.
I looked it up, cuz I couldn't remember which way is the needle move. Imagine a little x on the front of the needle standing up right. The right channel is the left wall and it signal causes the needle to move diagonally up into the right, and then the right side of the groove causes the needle to move diagonally up into the left . I believe the two movements are at 90° angles to each other . But the two movements combine on those 45's to create the stereo signal . I had thought it was plus shaped when I made my previous comment, but that was 45° out of phase with the truth so this is a correction for that.
I have to be honest: As a hobbyist photographer the actual footage you got was much less interesting than you explaining the building of the actual setup to film the action. :P
You could have tried coupling the light in with a beam splitter in the the tube to the camera. So you may focus it more effective where it is required, possibly reducing the required power, solving the heating and some stray reflection issues.
Green Silver I think it is because lasers have very narrow bandwidth which simply means they contain a single wavelength. As the surface is usually not perfectly smooth on microscopic level, therefore the reflected laser beam is not reflected in a uniform way. This causes some patches to interfere constructively and some destructively, causing dark and bright speckles to appear. This happens with ordinary light beams as well but because they contain large number of closely spaced wavelengths. This results in speckles for each wavelength to form at different places. The result is an averaging effect which washes out the speckles
Crazy too see how much the needle is moving. I always thought the motion of the stylus would be much smaller. Don't get me wrong, but the microscope effect isn't that huge as the diamond is still pretty small on the picture. but compared to its size, the influence of the groove it huge. What's also good to spot: these crappy plastic grooves should sound better than a lossless digital recording 🙂? I'm really a vinyl lover, but know about its limitations. Keep in mind, some people pay thousands of dollars for a silver cable, to think it makes the vinyl sound even better. Well, yes, no, definitely no 🙂.
Sure was a lot of effort but a great result! However, if you physically ran the record at 1/100th speed, then you could have managed with 1/100th of the light and/or run the camera slower. (The needle follows the grooves just the same at 0.33 rpm!)
No, the groove *dictates* the motion of the needle so that is linear. The signal generated in the pickup coil relies on relative movement of the needle and the arm and may not be linear at all speeds. The arm has much greater inertia and integrates (follows) the average position of the needle. If the speed was very very slow, the whole arm would move with the needle and either no signal or a distorted one would be generated as the arm becomes coupled. At very high speed the needle may jump out of the groove on high frequency or high amplitude sounds as the rate of change of path exceeds the needle's ability to remain in the groove - just like taking a corner too fast.
Bro, this was awesome. just an Idea for your lamp btw, . you need to get a cheap aliexpr "Universal tablet ipad holder". Its basically a desk-clamp with a bendable arm and on its end you have a swivel joint (remove ipad fixture) (insert diy lamp fixture).. Boom! micro spotlight on a bendable arm with clamp! nailed it
Wow! Don’t know if anyone else has asked this, but is it a myth that shouldn’t play an LP more than once a day due to heat distortion? Asking for a friend🤔
Yes it's true, you shouldn't repeatedly play a record surface more than once a day because the vinyl surface needs to rest because it heats up due to the friction and the repeated playing will wear out the grooves.
