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Watch a Spinning Vinyl Record Shatter at 12,500 Frames Per Second

Every medium of music has its problems. Early tries at preserving audio in a physical format like the wax cylinder weren’t necessarily of the highest quality, and while cassette tapes were convenient, they too didn’t always sound the best (although it’s possible that had a lot to do with low-quality speakers in a lot of cassette players). CDs are prone to getting scratched. MP3 files are compressed and can get deleted if your hard drive goes bad. Streaming music can go away if you don’t have a strong enough Internet connection.

Then there are vinyl records: If you spin them around fast enough, they’ll shatter into a bunch of tiny shards (via LaughingSquid).

In this new video from YouTube favorites The Slow Mo Guys, they use the motor from a vacuum cleaner to spin records around really fast, gradually increasing the RPMs until they get some shattering. To the naked eye, it basically just looks like the records instantaneously pop, but when slowed down after being filmed at 12,500 frames per second, we see that’s not the case at all. When the record just can’t take it anymore, cracks start to form, at which point the rotational velocity makes them deeper and deeper until there’s barely a record left standing. This works similarly with a CD as well, as the Slow Mo Guys demonstrated in a video from a few years ago.

What else would you like to see spun around really fast and filmed in slow motion? Sound off in the comments!

Featured image: The Slow Mo Guys/YouTube

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