And you know me – it had to be a projectile made of water.

The shopping mall where I live has some really nice water features that I always get fascinated by, so I had to share. My favorite one is the fountain in the picture below (and if it is too hard to see in the pictures, there is a movie at the bottom of this post).

It doesn’t look terribly spectacular here, but the really nice feature is that the water sometimes goes in short bursts.

In the picture below, for example, you see a moment where the water has stopped, but there is still quite a lot on its way.

You can watch it falling, and you see that on the right, the next burst is starting.

What I find so fascinating is that the short bursts of water visualize the trajectory so much more clearly than a continuous stream of water does, and also than a flying ball would. It almost gives the impression of being slow motion, even though of course it is not.

If I were to teach introductory physics any time soon, I would make a really nice teaching unit out of this one. But for now I’ll leave you with a movie: