Thanks to Bryan at Why Now? for the alert that one of the most important early influences on my life as passed away.
A month short of his 90th birthday Donald Jeffrey Herbert, better known to Boomers as Mr. Wizard, died today. The Associated Press has a short obituary.
For a lot of us, this was our first taste of science, and you could do it in your kitchen without a lot of equipment or special ingredients. He was responsible for a lot people entering science, and was a hell of a teacher.
I was fascinated watching Mr. Wizard and much to my parents dismay tried to duplicate as many of his demonstrations and experiments as possible. I was not always successful but I sure had a lot of fun trying.
As I mentioned over at Bryan's place one experiment that stuck with me all these years and the one that always comes to mind when I Mr. Wizard is mentioned is the demonstration of atmospheric pressure. He put some water in a clean 1 gallon metal can like paint thinner came in and put it over hot plate to boil the water. Once the water was at a good boil and the can full of hot steam he removed the can from the heat and screwed the lid on tight. As soon as the steam in the can began to cool and condensate the vapor pressure in the can went down dramatically allowing the normal atmospheric pressure outside to begin to crush the can dramatically. Quite the impressive stunt.
Thanks Mr. Wizard for hours or even years of fascination and curiosity.
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