Yesterday, this mesmerizing 6MB animated GIF was making the rounds on the internet. It usually had the description “Jello cubes bouncing at 6200 FPS”. Beyond that, it was left a little mysterious, with no credit given to the creator or explanation of the technology. Doing basic searches using those terms was a bit of a rabbit hole, with endless loops of blogs linking to blogs, all maintaining the mystery by saying nothing more than “Jello cubes bouncing at 6200 FPS”. But perhaps the greatest mystery of all is why anyone would watch a browser-crashing 6 megabyte GIF when you could watch it in streaming HD, as in the video above.

Those who know and care about these sorts of things know that the clip was filmed as a teaser for the 2011 release of “Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking”, which is available on Amazon for a mere $468.72 . If you just spit your coffee out, I hope you had a Phantom V12.1 high-speed camera running at 6200 FPS; that would make a nice addition to the other high speed videos shot for the project. But you probably didn’t. The camera costs over $100,000. Which helps frame the scale of this epic project; the Amazon page actually has one of the best summaries you’ll find, including a full bio of Nathan Myhrvold, the main brain behind Intellectual Ventures, the group that assembled this epic publication. The term “epic” is apt here; it’s six volumes, 2438 pages, and weighs over 50 pounds. Myhrvold apparently “doesn’t do small”; prior to developing the Modernist Cuisine project, he was the first chief technology officer at Microsoft, serving until 1999.

Most of us would probably rather buy actual food than a book about it for 468 bucks, but at least we get to watch cool free videos. For another fun example of what you can do with a Phantom high speed camera, check out Locked in a Vegas Hotel Room with a Phantom Flex, below: