Film cameras slice fluid seconds of time into individual pieces, allowing scientists and laypeople new insights into events happening in high speed. Case in point: In the late 1870s, people didn’t know whether a horse trotting ever had all four of its feet simultaneously in the air. An enterprising photographer, Eadweard Muybridge, captured a series of snapshots — a filmstrip — of a horse trotting and definitively settled the question in the affirmative. You can see the horse in-motion and check out the geeky tech from this magazine piece on high speed photography.

Fast forward 130 years and we can now split a second into 2,000 of its constituent parts and examine them. One incredible example is the video of the yellow balloon exploding above. At that speed, the water appears much more viscous than it is, holding its shape for a few thousandths of a second before gravity pulls it to the ground.

And the march of technology continues as Wired.com’s Gadget Lab reported in January on a camera that gets a million frames a second. Of course, watching that film is probably as boring as viewing Andy Warhold’s "Sleep," which consists entirely of long takes of a poet just sleeping.

On the other hand, guns are exciting. So, to see things shooting or being shot in ultra slow motion, I recommend this site.