Mr. Wizard's World

Flash Paper - Mr. Wizard crumples paper into a ball to simulate a shooting star. He explains that a real shooting star burns because of the friction of the atmosphere as stellar dust enters it. He gives Leila a large sheet of Flash Paper to burn which produces a huge flame. Mr. Wizard illustrates the concept of inertia by showing Christian a cup on top of which is a block of plastic supporting an orange. Using the handle of the broom, Mr. Wizard knocks the plastic out of the way so that the orange drops into the cup. Inertia keeps the orange in place and once the plastic block is started, inertia keeps it moving out of the way. You know where to locate the Panama Canal. It’s the man-made waterway that connects the Atlantic Ocean with the Pacific across the Isthmus of Panama. As the ship leaves the Atlantic to go the fifty one miles to the Pacific, is it going east or west? Hero’s Voice - Scott is given a remote control to a robot. It enters the room and introduces itself. It's name is Hero. Scott attaches the remote control. The side of the robot is opened to reveal the unit which controls speech. Mr. Wizard instructs Scott as he programs Hero. The robot repeats all the sounds of which it is capable. Scott moves the dial that controls pitch and speed. Nipple Expansion - Tanis is asked to guess how much gas is in a 12 oz. can of soda. She makes a guess based on volume marks on the side of a nursing bottle. She pours the soda into the nursing bottle and Mr. Wizard caps it with the nipple without a hole in it. Tanis shakes the bottle. The pressure of the gas released by the agitation expands the nipple until all of the 12 ounces of the liquid flows into the enlarged nipple. Exercise For Cows: Well, cows jog along at two to four miles an hour on a special track developed by dairy scientists at Utah State University and the U.S. Agricultural Service. Years ago, dairy cows moved around in packers but today they are kept in pens and fed a prepared diet. As a result, they’re out of shape. Before putting a cow on a jogging program, scientists check its heart with an electrocardiogram. Doctors recommend a similar test for people before they start jogging. They record data on the cows before and after exercise to find out if there is any correlation between running speed, distance, and milk produc­tion. Reaction Time - Carolyn is shown a simple way to measure reaction time. She is to touch numbered squares out of numerical order on a piece of paper. Her first try times out at 12 seconds. Try #2 is seven seconds. Try #3 is four seconds. Obviously, practice can reduce reaction time. Mr. Wizard holds a ruler with marks that indicate how far it has fallen and thus how much time has elapsed. When he lets it fall, Carolyn is to catch it as quickly as she can. Her reaction time averages about .2 second.

Sugar & Acid - Tanis holds sugar in aluminum foil with lab tongs over flame at the stove. It turns black. Mr. Wizard explains sugar is made of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. When you heat up sugar, you drive off oxygen and hydrogen, leaving the carbon. Straw Oboe - Mr.Wizard and Eugene make straw oboes by pinching the tips and cutting off the corners of the flat part at 45 degree angles. They each blow into their straw oboes and create sounds. Ant Farmers: It’s obvious why this ant is called a leaf cutter. With its special jaws, it can quickly cut off a section of leaf the right size to carry away. The ant itself or another one waiting below will carry the piece of leaf to the colony’s underground nest. They’re so efficient, they have been known to strip a farmer’s grove completely bare of leaves in a single night. Rolling Pin Code - Leila is confronted by a strip of paper with letters of the alphabet on it. It's a message with the letters rearranged. Mr.Wizard wraps the paper around a cardboard tube. The letters line up but make no sense because it’s the wrong cylinder. Equal Solids - Christian identifies small plastic geometric figures as a cylinder, cube, cone, sphere, a rectangular solid, and a pyramid. Mr. Wizard asks him to guess which is the biggest and which the smallest. Christian chooses the rectangular solid as the biggest and the sphere as the smallest. Hawaiian Volcano - When there is a violent eruption of a Hawaiian volcano, molten lava from deep within the earth spews forth with awesome power. As the hot lava works its way to the surface, gases that have been under tremendous pressure are suddenly released. The lava is blasted into the air. Remember, this is rock. Heated to as much as 2,000 degrees Fahr­enheit, the rock becomes a thick gooey fluid that pours out of the vent and collects within the crater. Swallow Upside Down - Heather bites into an apple and is asked to take a breath and swallow at the same time. She tries and declares: It doesn't work! Inside her throat is a sort of trap door that closes when she swallows to prevent food from entering her lungs. Mr. Wizard demonstrates how food goes from mouth to stomach by having Heather squeeze a marble down and then up an uninflated balloon. He has her stand on her head as he feeds her apple pieces. She chews and swallows them up to her stomach. Crush Egg - Michael is challenged to crush an egg with his hand. Hard as he tries, he finds he can't do it. He breaks the egg into a dish to prove that it was a real egg. He can't break the egg because the pressure of his hand is spread over the entire surface of the egg. The egg also has a strong shell, a liquid inside (a liquid is very difficult to compress), and finally, it is dome‑shaped - a strong form.

Homemade Volcano -Michael has made a volcano out of paper mache, vinegar, and baking soda. Mr. Wizard's is made of asbestos paper. Michael fills the crater of the model with ammonium dichromate and Mr. Wizard adds broken up sparklers (Michael calls them sparklees). They add a gunpowder fuse. Michael lights the fuse while Mr. Wizard turns out the lights. The model erupts with flashes of fire and sparks. Dropper Diver - A medicine dropper is suspended in a transparent plastic bottle filled with water. Mr. Wizard contends it is a magic medicine dropper that rises and falls on command. Gia is doubtful. How Many Stars? -When you look up at the sky at night, how many stars can you see? On a moonless night with no clouds you could count as many as 3,000 stars but that is not even the half of it. On the other side of the earth you could count 3,000 more. Heat Spiral - Billy describes a Christmas ornament that works on the same principle as the paper heat spiral going around on top of a lamp. Mr. Wizard shows him how to make the spiral out of paper. They examine a spool and pencil set on top of a lamp shade. A needle has been inserted into the eraser. On the needle he places a needle and sets it spinning to show that the combination is a good bearing because there is little friction. He adds the paper spiral to the thimble. It spins because the light bulb heats the air around it making the air expand. Heat From Your Body - Stacey examines a chart with the recommended number of calories for boys and girls of varying ages. Stacey is 12 years old so she needs 1,200 calories per day. They are going to illustrate each form of heat transfer using a hot electric iron. If she touched the iron, heat would be transferred to it by conduction; hand over hot iron, convection; alcohol on hand feels cool, evaporation; hand near iron, radiation. Paper Fold - Warren is challenged to fold a piece of paper more than eight times. Warren knows the trick and folds it only six times. Computer Plane - This is an outline of the supersonic airplane but not a real one. It’s a mathemati­cal model of the plane that was fed into a computer along with the calculated stresses on the surfaces indicated by the various colors. With the computer controls, the model can be rotated and flexed to see what happens to the stresses. Walk Through Paper - Leila is told to cut a hole in an 8½ by 11‑inch piece of paper big enough to walk through. She says it's impossible and cuts a large circular hole which obviously is much too small to walk through. Mr. Wizard shows her a pattern of cuts that are a series of slits resembling a maze. After making the cuts, the opening is large enough to put over her head and down over her body. She steps out of it. Mr. Wizard produces a paper already cut with slits that are closer together. They drape the cut paper around the doorway. The hole is large enough for Leila to jump through.

Dry Ice Fog - A paper fence on the floor is to keep in a cloud, because they're going to experiment with dry ice, so called because it changes from a solid directly to a gas and does not melt. Stacey drops a small piece into a jar of hot water. The white bubbles are filled with carbon dioxide gas and water vapor. She adds a little detergent to the jar. Copious bubbles are produced which roll down the sides of the jar. They add many pieces of dry ice to the sink full of hot water. Water vapor spills out of the sink onto the floor. They appear to be walking in a cloud. Napkin Suction - Anna puts a drop of water on a paper towel which absorbs the water. They briefly discuss capillary action. Mr. Wizard has her fill a glass to the top with water. He places four pieces of paper towel on a saucer. Anna inverts the saucer and papers and places them over the glass. Mr. Wizard inverts the whole set up. They note that some of the water is absorbed by the towel producing a partial vacuum. Anna picks up the glass. Air pressure has glued the saucer to it. CRAWLING CELL - This is not a close-up of the sun or a picture of an explosion. It is a living individual cell similar to those you have inside of you. The cell is that round part in the middle and those lines around it are the result of an experiment by Dr. Albert Harris. COMPUTER GRAPH - Stacey enters with a list of students and grades from a science test. She wants to make a bar graph. Mr. Wizard shows how to enter the data into the computer. Stacey reads the instructions from the computer screen and enters the proper information. They print out the results which Stacey will take to class. STARCH TEST - On the table are samples of flour, sugar, typing paper, soda cracker, and aspirin. Angela knows starch comes from corn and wheat, is in foods like spaghetti, and is put on clothes to make them stiff. When iodine combines with starch, a blue black color is produced. Angela is challenged to determine which of the five items contain starch. LIZARD AUTOPSY - Lizards like this one live in the warm regions of every continent. But this one lives in the National Zoo in Washington, DC. And one of its cage mates that appeared to be healthy has just died. Why? FIND YOUR PULSE - As clues to guessing his heart rate, Mr. Wizard asks Michael to compare animals of different sizes and their heart rates: baboon = 100 times per minute; lion = 50; elephant = 25. Michael notes the smaller the animal the faster its heart beats. He guesses his beats 75 times per minute because he figures he is a little smaller than a baboon whose rate is 100 beats per minute.

HOT AIR BALLOON - Scott and Jason prepare to launch a hot air balloon made of paper. The launcher is a stove pipe with a base of bricks. Mr. Wizard instructs Scott to light the newspaper inside the brick base. Jason holds the balloon open over the top of the cylinder. As the air inside the balloon is heated, it weighs less than an equal volume of cooler air. Gravity pulls the colder air down and the warmer air is forced upward carrying the balloon along with it. NYC to TOKYO - Tanis is asked to select the shortest route from New York to Tokyo and determine if it would go over California, British Columbia, or Alaska. She says it looks like the shortest route would be over California, but says she took a trip with her father from Calgary to Germany and flew over Greenland. She's not sure why. Mr. Wizard explains that the wall map is a Mercator projection that distorts areas. WHISPERING TUBE - Mr.Wizard speaks through a paper tube and says: Now hear this. Now hear this. Billy recognizes it as a message on a ship and assumes tubes are used in case microphones are knocked out, they can still communicate. HERO’S HAND - Leila is introduced to Hero, a robot designed to teach robotics. Mr. Wizard asks her if she'd like a glass of milk. Hero has been programmed to serve it. Leila pushes a button on the robot. It picks up a glass of milk, turns to Leila, and sets the glass down in front of her. Leila says: Thank you. ROBOTS IN THE FACTORY - Watch this welder at work. Each weld will be exactly in the right place and its all done by a machine with no one at the controls. That is one definition of a robot. How does it know exactly where each weld is supposed to be? OPTICAL ILLUSION - Mr.Wizard has drinking straws lined up on the table and asks Stacey to pick the longest. She assumes they are the same length. He cautions her that he expected she would know about optical illusions and so could fool her. He points out he could have cut off one of the straws. She thinks he is simply trying to trick her. She uses another straw to compare the two in the illusion. She finds one straw much shorter than the other. I-BEAM - Michael is to be an engineer and build a bridge over an imaginary river between two bricks using three pieces of wood. He puts a single piece of wood between the bricks. It sags when he steps on it. He adds strength with a second and then the third piece of wood. The bridge still sags. Mr.Wizard explains I-Beams.

FIRE WRITING - Mr. Wizard shows Christian a sheet of paper on which a solution of potassium nitrate was painted and allowed to dry. Christian touches various points on the paper with a lighted punk. The paper burns only where there is potassium nitrate because it releases extra oxygen and that section burns forming a trail. PAPER TOWEL TUBE - Angela examines a paper tube from inside a roll of paper toweling. Mr. Wizard shows her a picture of three geometric figures and asks her to define them. She names and defines a rectangle, a parallelogram, and a trapezoid. She is to guess which shape will be formed when she opens the tube along the spiral line produced when the tube was formed. She guesses it will be a parallelogram. They open up the tube. She sees that the two sets of the opposite sides are parallel, therefore it is a parallelogram. FISH BOMBING RUN - This plane is on an unusual mission: a bomb run in the rocky mountains of Colorado. The target is that lake down below. The pilot, Wayne Russell, of the Colorado State Division of Wildlife starts his dive. He has to be about 100 feet over the water and flying no faster than 80 miles per hour. Then bombs away! HOW A BIRD FLIES - A flying bird on a video monitor helps Mr. Wizard pose the problem of how a bird can fly. He has Jennifer blow over a piece of paper to reduce the air pressure there. The normal pressure underneath forces it up. She blows over paper curved like a wing shape which also moves upward. They look at a real bird's wing and note it's shape. Jennifer asks what makes the bird move forward? IMPOSSIBLE HOLES - Scott is going to cut a piece of paper to make it look like another piece in which there appears to be two impossible holes. A sheet of paper is plain on one side plain and the striped on the other. While hiding it from Scott, Mr. Wizard folds it to produce the strange holes. When Scott can see the finished piece, he realizes how one side of the paper has been turned over after it has been cut. Mr. Wizard shows him how to cut, fold, and flip one side of the paper to make two “impossible” holes. BLEACH ART - Leila is not impressed with the artistic quality of the art work Mr. Wizard has displayed around the kitchen. He challenges her to paint something of her own using construction paper and bleach. The chlorine in the bleach breaks down water (H20) releasing the oxygen which does the actual bleaching. She uses various common items to paint her own design on a sheet of construction paper. Mr. Wizard tries to guess what it is until Leila identifies it as a jellyfish. WOOLLY APHIDS - What look like balls of wool are the so‑called woolly aphids, small insects that suck plant juices. Ants milk the aphids for the sweet liquid they excrete and attack and kill any insect that might prey on the aphids. TRICKS WITH GRAVITY - Tanis tries to get up from a chair while Mr. Wizard holds his index finger on her forehead. She can't get up. She gets up from a chair and notes how she shifts her center of gravity from the seat to her feet in order to stand up. COMPUTER EXPLOSION – Mr. Wizard narrates a computer’s description of pressure and indicated explosions. HOME MADE FIRE EXTINGUISHER – Mr. Wizard shows Christian how to use water, vinegar and sodium bicarbonate to make a home-made fire extinguisher.