If you couldn’t get enough of flying potatoes the first time, the nice people at the Ellen Show are rerunning the show that originally aired on April 15, 2008. The featured experiments include the Baby Diaper Secret, Fire Water and several versions of our potato guns (okay… call them “launchers”).

Learn how to do the experiments featured on the Ellen Show

Over one million viewers tuned in to learn how to spice up their 4th of July activities by making Steve Spangler’s potato gun. The original potato launching segment that aired a week earlier on the 9NEWS 4 O’Clock show prompted viewers to email in record number wondering where to get the handheld launcher. Here’s the potato launcher write-up.

Watch the potato gun video… too much 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 never would have guessed that the volume of email response would have been this great. My inbox was overflowing with emails from viewers who each had their on “version” of a potato gun… which were dangerous to say the least!!! How could my relatively harmless version of a spud launcher be in any way related to these monster potato cannons? However, I did receive one email with a link to a website with great potato gun stories. If you’re a potato gun enthusiast, you’ll love the stories.