Humans conduct electricity. All you need to do is complete a circuit to demonstrate how electricity moves around the human body. The electricity conducts or moves over the skin. To demonstrate this, use an Energy Ball to describe an open and closed circuit. When the two metal electrodes on the ball are touched simultaneously and the circuit is closed, the Energy Ball will flash and make a buzzing sound. Touch clothes, shoes and other accessories to test whether or not it will conduct the electricity. If skin conducts electricity, what about something like a pickle? Watch this demonstration only to see how a pickle can light up the night sky. Here’s a hint – salty pickles work best.
There’s only one problem with these “best of” video lists… someone has to actually sort through all of the videos and come up with a list! Props to our genius video editor, Bradley Mayhew, for all of his editing magic in 2008. When the year starts out with 4,500 pounds of cornstarch and water and a cement truck on The Ellen Degeneres Show… you know it’s going to be quite a year! Our video and experiment library has grown to almost 400, with 70 new science videos added to our science video library just this year. Selecting our Top 10 Videos for the year was tough, but here are our personal favorites. Let us know what you think…
If you’re a fan of the Ellen Show, you know that the show recently moved to a new set on the Warner Bros Studio lot. The new studio is huge… great for exploding clouds of liquid nitrogen! Watch the video, but keep reading to learn what happens behind all of those clouds.
I’ve mentioned this before, but it deserves a second mention. Ellen DeGeneres and the people who make up her staff are absolutely top-notch, first-class, amazing people who love their jobs. From the moment we arrived on the lot, there was someone ready to help us with anything we needed. And unlike a normal guest, I have a bunch of weird stuff to set-up backstage. The request list that I turned into the producers for this segment included rain coats, fire extinguishers, liquid nitrogen and a huge jar of pickles. With lots of stuff comes lots of set-up time backstage and probably more interaction with the Ellen Show crew than most guests get.
Aside from having a great time, the big take away for me during this visit was the way the Ellen staff does
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Last week the producers at the Ellen Show called to see if I had anything new that might amaze Ellen… and make her laugh. Hmmm… what do you think? After a few phone calls and some time trading some demo videos over e-mail, we’re set with the show line-up for Tuesday, April 15th. The most asked question I get after one of these appearances is how do I go about picking the science experiments. Does the producer pick everything? Do I get to make any suggestions? The answer is both. In the case of the Ellen Show, the producers come to me with some requests after watching a few of my science video segments from 9NEWS and ask for my feedback. We trade ideas and finally arrive at a final list of demos that the segment producer pitches to his executive producers. The moment we get the thumbs up, we move into high gear getting everything packed and shipped off to the studio in Burbank. That’s the boring answer to the question.
