Non-fiction
By Larry Jin
April 19, 2026
For the first time, researchers have used a strand of optical fiber—the same kind of cable that carries your internet—to better understand high-speed impacts.
Though early in development, this breakthrough could revolutionize how scientists observe the split-second physics of crashes and shock waves.
Scientists refer to these violent collisions as shock loading events: moments like an F1 car striking a barrier at 200 miles per hour. In a fraction of a millisecond, shock waves ripple through the chassis. Bolts shear. Carbon fibers fracture. Measuring these near-instantaneous effects is essential for informing the design decisions behind life-saving safety systems from airbags and crumple zones to bike helmets and bulletproof vests.
To understand shock loading events, scientists primarily rely on technology invented in 1904 by an Austrian priest named August Musger. Musger patented a projection system designed to eliminate the flicker of early motion pictures. He laid the groundwork for slow motion. By recording motion at higher frame rates and replaying it at normal speed, scientists could stretch fractions of a second into observable events.
Since Musger’s invention, slow-motion technology has advanced at an astonishing pace. The fastest experimental system, known as SCARF, can capture up to 156 trillion frames per second. Today, the limits of slow-motion imaging are no longer about speed, but about the physical constraints of cameras.
Cameras require a direct line of sight to the subject, which can be difficult to achieve in enclosed environments. If a scientist wanted to observe internal damage to an engine after a collision, a camera could not capture the impact from within the structure. Removing the vehicle’s exterior would provide a line of sight, but it would compromise the realism of the experiment, since the outer body influences how forces are distributed on impact.
An alternative to slow-motion imaging is the strain gauge, a sensor bonded directly to a surface to measure deformation. However, strain gauges struggle under extreme deformation, making them unsuitable for capturing shock-loading events. When both imaging and strain gauges fall short, capturing shock loading events requires a different approach.
A key advance in this field came from the team of Yang Baohui, Dung Dinh Luong, and Nikhil Gupta, researchers based in the Composite Materials and Mechanics Laboratory at the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department of New York University Tandon School of Engineering. Yang worked alongside Luong and Gupta. The laboratory investigates how advanced materials respond under extreme loading and how embedded measurement systems can better capture those responses.
The researchers began with an optical fiber—a cable made of hair-thin strands of flexible glass that carry light. They bent the fiber into a tight 25-millimeter loop, creating what they called a Fiber Optic Loop Sensor, or FOLS. Under normal conditions, the light remained trapped inside the fiber. When the loop was compressed, some of that light leaked out. By measuring this loss of light, the researchers could determine how much force was applied to the loop.
To evaluate the sensor under shock-loading conditions, the researchers prepared a thin carbon fiber plate. They mounted the FOLS and a traditional strain gauge onto the surface and positioned a high-speed camera to record the deformation.
The team then fired controlled bursts of compressed air at the plate, causing it to bend and oscillate. Because strain gauges and slow-motion imaging are well-established measurement tools under these conditions, the researchers used them as benchmarks to test whether the fiber-optic sensor could perform under the same conditions.
When they compared the results, all three methods produced identical measurements, demonstrating that the FOLS could reliably, and more accurately, capture shock-loading events.
Much work remains before the technology can be widely adopted. Researchers must refine the sensor’s durability, expand its measurement range, and explore how it can be embedded directly into real-world structures. But if successful, this hair-thin strand of glass could allow engineers to observe forces inside enclosed systems that cameras cannot reach and strain gauges cannot measure.
More than a century after slow motion first stretched time for scientists, a loop of optical fiber may offer a new way to see what happens in the blink of an eye, enabling engineers to make more informed design decisions.
