If you want to understand and measure the world around you, one of the most important tools at your disposal is the ability to image — or take a snapshot — of precisely what’s occurring. In the 19th century, photography meant holding your subject perfectly still while you accumulated large amounts of light: several seconds worth of it. In more modern times, we can perform high-speed photography, using a shorter “pulse” of light to image an individual, brief moment in the life of objects as th...