I’m going to stay on the science beat for another day as today we lost another one of my heroes. Don Hebert, better known as Mr. Wizard, passed on to the other side today. One where the oil can rockets always fire and you can reach the end of the mobius strip. That isn’t meant to be ironic, I’m really bummed by this news. Mr. Wizard was one of my heroes growing up.
See, I have been a science geek since…since…well, I honestly can’t remember when I wasn’t one. I grew up in a house where the news was always on and we had a subscription to National Geographic. I was six or seven looking at all of these pictures of outer space and going, “That is awesome.” I’d steal my older siblings books on the planets and study them, read about how with a nuclear powered spaceship we could fly to Mars by 1999 and discover the mysteries of the planet Pluto. Ok, I can’t claim that they were entirely accurate textbooks but they got me excited in science.
Then, we got cable and I got to see Mr. Wizard’s World on Nickelodeon, which was the best thing since I outgrew 3-2-1 Contact. And to be honest, I was slightly older than the appropriate age range (it fit in much better for my younger brother) but it was still cool to watch science experiments every night. I still understand the concept of friction best by the experiment involving a paint can tied to a swingset. You pull the paint can up to your face, let go, and if you believe in science and don’t flinch it won’t hit you on the way back because friction will never let the pendulum get back to its starting point. I think I used that info on a college physics test. Also, it was always cool to see the nine year old kid flinch the first time that paint can went flying back towards her face.
It was just a fun show for growing scientists. You had your usual mix of physics and chemistry and biology. Chemistry would typically get a bit of a short thrift as they didn’t want kids at home playing around with deadly chemicals. Incredibly, we have no problems with fifteen year olds doing experiments in school, including the time I decided to see what would happen if you introduced a flaming piece of wood into a tube filled with hydrogen. And to be honest, that isn’t even the worst thing I ever did in a lab. I don’t know if I ever mentioned the circuit board that I put into the ceiling when it exploded or the time I got shocked so hard I could feel the muscles in my arm contract and once I broke free from the current I stepped back from the circuit board and didn’t stop until I was three blocks away. Those are the experiences that I had only because of Mr. Wizard.
I wouldn’t be who I am today without those experiences. Shows like Mr. Wizard and 3-2-1 Contact made me think like a scientist when having Velcro on my shoes was handy because shoelaces were too challenging. I learned more about the universe and the world around me by watching those simple shows every afternoon. While I have moved away from my days of experiments and manipulating electricity for fun and profit I still think that I will always be an engineer first and foremost. It’s why all of these posts are from EC. At the end of the day, I will always be Engineer Chris.
(Oh, and a mobius strip is created by looping a piece of paper while giving it one half turn in the process. If you do that and trace along the side you’ll discover that the piece of paper now only has one side and you end up right where you started from. This stunned me when I was ten and confuses me still to this day. I’m highly confident that it truly is magic. I don’t know any other way of explaining how you can turn a two sided piece of paper into a one sided piece simply by looping it in an odd way.)
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