As Dave Chappelle proved to the world back in 2004, pretty much everything looks better in slow motion. It doesn’t matter what it is — for some reason, even the most mundane things look amazing when you slow them down to a thousandth of the speed (or more). A water balloon popping, a guy getting slapped in the face, a firecracker going off; you name it and it probably looks better in slow mo.
Case in point? This awesome video of a guy getting tased. Normally, the act of tasing somebody happens so quickly that you can’t actually watch what goes on — so all you typically see is the guy going stiff for a few seconds before dropping to the ground. But when you film it at 28,000 frames per second, you can see a hell of a lot more.
And that’s exactly what The Slow Mo Guys did. They actually traveled out to Taser HQ with a Phantom V2511 (a ridiculously high-speed camera) to get a closer look at what happens when a person gets zapped, and it’s absolutely fascinating.
The video shows a bunch of stuff that would otherwise be imperceptible to the naked eye — like the prongs exploding out from the cartridge in a puff of multi-colored confetti, and the ripples they create in a person’s skin right after they hit and attach themselves.
The most interesting part, however, is how you can actually watch the electricity travel through the guy’s body after the Taser’s prongs make contact. The voltage travels outward in a wave after the prongs hit, tensing all the muscles in his back as the current flows through his tissue.
What really makes the video great though is the little stuff that it teaches you about a Taser’s design. For example, that confetti it shoots out isn’t just for show — each little dot actually contains the serial number of the cartridge it was fired from, so it helps to leave a physical (and difficult to clean up) record of where the Taser was used. Pretty smart, right? You’ll also notice that the gun’s prongs are designed to spread out as they fire, since a better spread will electrify a larger portion of a person’s body and make the Taser more effective.
For more electrifying videos, check out the Slow Mo Guys on YouTube — you definitely won’t be disappointed.
