Whenever we’re fortunate enough to have the producers from the Ellen DeGeneres Show call our office, we know that the next few days are going to be wild. As I’ve mentioned in the past, the producers are very hands-on when it comes to selecting the preliminary list of science demos and listening to our ideas for ways to allow Ellen to get involved with each experiment. We spend most of the time talking about the big finale for each segment… and I think that the audience is going to be surprised when they see what’s going to happen… to them! This is beyond a doubt the biggest audience participation stunt we’ve ever done on the show. The show is scheduled for Wednesday, March 2nd. Find out when the Ellen DeGeneres Show is on in your area.
Halloween Science and the Ellen DeGeneres Show seem to go hand in hand. I was excited to get the call from Ellen’s producers last week with an invite to be a guest on her ever-popular Halloween Show. We’ve practiced and practiced our new demos for the show (no, we can’t spill the beans right now), and I think we’ll have a few surprises for her and the studio audience. Of course, everyone tunes in to see Ellen’s costume. My only hope is that it’s not flammable… and that’s all I can say.
Find out when the Ellen DeGeneres Show is on in your area.
We’re back from the Warner Bros. studios in Burbank, California with lots of fun stories from our latest appearance on the Ellen DeGeneres Show. When I say ‘we’… I mean ‘we’ because there’s no way I could pull these segments off by myself. Jeff Brooks, Carly Reed and Lisa Brooks traveled with me and worked hard backstage and on the outside location shoot to make everything run smoothly. Unlike other talk shows, the people at the Ellen Show are used to pulling off big stunts… but even this one had everyone a little on edge because no one really knew what was going to happen to all of those ping pong balls. Watch the video…
The line-up of science demos was as follows…
Cloud in a Bottle – a really visual way of creating a water vapor cloud instantly in a 2-liter bottle.
The second demo was a Dust Explosion using a very fine spore called Lycopodium, a fine yellow powder derived from the spores of Lycopodium clavatum (stag’s horn club moss, running ground pine). By itself, the powder is not flammable. When the fine powder is dispersed in the air and each particle is surrounded by oxygen, it’s very flammable…and the
Should Ellen DeGeneres be worried that our team is bringing 4,000 ping pong balls to her studio for my appearance on Monday, April 26th? Based on the things that have fizzed, popped, caught on fire or exploded in the past, there’s no need for worry… right? It’s always an honor to be invited back on the show. Whenever Ellen’s producers call, we know that it’s going to be a crazy few weeks of planning and practice before heading out to the Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank, California.
I’ve always wanted to do something with a large number of ping pong balls, but never knew quite what to do. Thanks to a great brainstorming session with @carlyreed and @jefferybrooks, I think we have something that will be fun for Ellen and her audience.
Huge thanks to the Arizona Science Center for allowing us to use their bed of nails demonstration on-air yesterday. The Arizona Republic ran this article.
