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How to film the perfect burger drop, the robot way

If you've ever wondered how burger commercials achieve the perfect bounce, one director has given us a glance behind the scenes.

It's something you've probably seen a thousand times. In the burger advertisement, the ingredients of a burger perfectly fall on top of each other, resulting in a bounce that says, "Look at how fresh and juicy and delicious I am!"

But the secret behind those gloriously bouncing burgers? A whole world of mess. To fix this, one director built a machine specifically for dropping burgers. Steve Giralt built what he calls the Precision Arduino Timing Relay Imaging Controller, or PATRIC, to coordinate the tomato sauce and mustard colliding, and the burger ingredients falling into place as a high-speed camera attached to a robotic arm films the results.

And he documented the process with a mesmerising behind-the-scenes video so that, if you have the time and inclination, you can try and film your very own perfect burger drop.