Thursday, March 1, 2012

How to suspend a raindrop in mid-air

Raindrop (Image: Alistair McClymont) 

 A single water droplet hovering in mid-air, a rainbow still shining long after sundown - they aren’t things you’d expect to come across every day. But down a darkened north-London street, tucked away in a small industrial-looking art gallery, there they were - thanks to Alistair McClymont, artist in residence at the Art House Foundation gallery. Raindrop and Rainbow are the latest of what McClymont describes as ‘phenomena’ artworks, in which he tries to capture natural, often overlooked occurrences and evoke a sense of wonder.
Rainbow (Image: Alistair McClymont)

After seeing a documentary that featured a machine that could keep a single raindrop in free fall, McClymont was eager to figure out how it worked. He contacted physicist Clive Saunders, a member of the team that built the machine at the University of Manchester, to ask if he could come and have a look. “What it was doing - the idea of being able to see just a single raindrop - was really beautiful,” he says. After meeting with Saunders, McClymont set about building his own machine. Now, just over two years later, the results are on display, along with various tools, diagrams and Saunders’ 1974 paper that inspired it all.

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