Inside nearly everything made of concrete, you’ll find reinforced steel rods that compress the material, making buildings, bridges, and other structures even stronger. The rods aren’t designed to break easily, but when they do, the best way to watch the destructive results is through the lens of a slow motion camera.
The Slow Mo Guys visited a Purdue University testing lab with a Phantom v2511 camera, which captured the stretching of a steel rod at 28,500 frames per second. The rod itself snaps under the tension, but in the process, its outer layer shatters into thousands of tiny pieces of steel shrapnel, which go flying in every direction. So much for supposed brute strength of reinforced steel.
[YouTube]
