Going back to the roots: how to create stroboscopic photos from digital videos

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates how to generate stroboscopic photos from digital videos using Tracker software, enabling intuitive analysis of various physical movements for educational purposes.

Contribution

It introduces a method to create educational stroboscopic images from digital videos, combining historical context with practical examples for physics teaching.

Findings

Effective creation of stroboscopic photos from digital videos.

Application to diverse physics experiments including mechanics and electromagnetism.

Enhanced educational engagement through visual analysis.

Abstract

We show here how to create from digital films using the well-known software Tracker stroboscopic photos in order to analyze different types of movements. The advantage of this procedure is that it is possible to analyze the printed photo or on a computer screen in an intuitive way for the students. After presenting a historical perspective of the use of stroboscopic photos in secondary education we discuss several examples: the movement of a remote control car, an elastic planar collision, the movement of a projectile and also an experiment in electromagnetism, more specifically, the discharge of a capacitor measured using an analog multimeter.