June 21, 2005

Potato Gun Fun

I just completed a segment for television on the "power of air". How else to better demonstrate "power" than to have a little fun with a potato gun. Now before anyone gets bent out of shape because I'm doing something so "unsafe", take a look at the video to see how this potato launcher works. The original design was actually created by a great chemistry teacher from Naperville, Illinois by the name of Lee Marek. It's really a great way to demonstrate Boyle's Law. Behind the scenes... Remember that most of the work I do on television is live. There's no retakes or editing - what you see is what you get, and rarely do I ever get a chance to practice with any of the other news anchors. If you watched the video, you saw that Mark Koebrich and I had a blast on camera, but that's all you saw "on camera". What you didn't see was the camera man, director, audio technician and the security guard all shooting potato plugs in the 9NEWS backyard. Funny how a simple little device can bring the kid out in all of us. But I … (more...)