Jared Ficklin of Frog Design once again blew up the spot with his exciting real-world and Flash-based auditory experiments. In order to illustrate how sound travels, he showed how air, like sound, is transparent but still moves. Of course, Jared cannot explain any principal of physics without a (potentially dangerous) physical example. So, he rigged up an air rifle created using a plastic trash can, filled it with smoke from a $29 smoke-machine, and shot the smoke in all directions… several times.It may not seem too significant on the surface, but beneath the surface it reveals the obvious joy Jared gains from working with technology that he loves.

In addition to blasting the audience members with smoke, Jared also showed his awesome Ruben’s tube video (which I originally wrote about here). However, this time he managed to bring a safe version (containing little white objects as opposed to fire) and demonstrated that live. In the end however, Jared, not being someone to let something as novel as “danger” stop him from teaching people the wonderful, physical mysteries of the world of sound, unveiled the actual flaming Ruben’s Tube at the Industry Leader dinner @ the SupperClub:

(Big up to KidBombay for the snap)

Jared also covered some major principles of working with audio in Flash, including destructive/constructive interference, the beauty of algorithmic spawning, and of course the transcendent truth that, “Flash loves Neil Diamond” (Apperently Neil Diamond tracks consistently result in good results within the course of Jared’s experimentation)

You can see a video of Jared’s Ruben’s Tube here.