The Blob vs. Magneto: Final Smackdown

One more Crazy Aaron's Strange Attractor Thinking Putty-and-magnets movie. This time the magnets are the Neodymium Iron Boron magnet it came with plus two magnetic marbles someone left in an office when he moved on to another job.


I formed the putty into a cube and put it in the freezer. I thought it might make for an interesting effect with the action starting out slow (because the putty was really stiff) then speeding up as it warmed. I didn't notice anything like that happening. The strong magnet quickly got swallowed by the putty and the marbles took their time. The condensation forming then evaporating was the only interesting effect of the freezing.


I changed the interval between shots as time went by. It started with four-second intervals. Before we went out for dinner and "Sleeping Beauty Wakes" at the La Jolla Playhouse I had worked the interval up to four minutes between shots. When we got home from the show I increased the interval to eight minutes.


The shots were played back at 30 frames per second but the action got slow fast. So I broke it up into pieces and play the segments back at increasingly higher rates. The nearly 22 hours (from 9:22am until 7:07 the next morning) take only 18 seconds. Wow. (Or, as some might say, "MOM.")


I might be finished with my magnetic silly putty movies unless somebody gives me ideas for more.