Nathan Myhrvold, Martha Stewart and Modernist Cuisine

This is a piece of popcorn. Want to see a video of how it was made?

In really, really slow motion?

Yeah, you know you do...

That was awesome, right? And it was courtesy of Nathan Myhrvold and the crew over at the Modernist Cuisine laboratory/kitchen, where one of the world's biggest, most expensive and most anticipated cookbooks ever was produced.

As a matter of fact, that cookbook (called, simple, Modernist Cuisine, and available for pre-order right now for just $500) is so big, so expensive and so hotly anticipated, that Myhrvold and his team ended up on the Martha Stewart Show this morning, showing off some of their gear and explaining how they worked some of the magic science contained within the book.

If you missed the show (like I did), there's a brief recap of what went down on the Martha Stewart website.

Or... You could just watch this video of a water balloon being popped in super-duper slo-motion, again courtesy of the Modernist Cuisine lab.