Watch a subwoofer and some fancy camera work cause water to defy gravity

By Mike Wehner, Tecca

If I were to tell you the video above uses no computer-aided visual effects or post processing, you'd probably think I was insane. The clip appears to show water freezing in mid air, and even flowing backwards in defiance of gravity. But the footage is genuine, and was not manipulated in any way — it's just a simple case of technology outsmarting itself.

To produce the jaw-dropping video you see above, YouTube user Brusspup took a subwoofer — a speaker which provides deep bass tones for music — and set it to the same frequency as the frame rate of his video camera. Then, he pumped water through a small plastic hose directly in front of the woofer, which vibrates the water as it flows into a pan below.

Because the water is vibrating at the same rate that the camera is recording, the water appears to freeze in mid air. By slightly tweaking the speaker's frequency, the water can even appear to flow up from below. It's a super simple concept, but it produces an effect that can only be described as mind-blowing.