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”).
There’s a sneak peek video just posted on the Ellen Show site with the Dancing Fire demo and the last part of the shooting potatoes segment. If you have a second, post a comment on the show site.
All this week on TV, I had the opportunity to get a behind the scenes look at Denver-based companies who each have a cool science twist to their business. The scientists at Gates Corporation invited our cameras on a tour of the hydraulic testing labs at Gates where they demonstrated how engineers test high pressure rubber hoses for commercial use. During the segment, Joel Edwards, Vice President of Fluid Technology & Product Development and Larry Kachinski, Senior Lab Engineer pressurized a hose rated to 6,000 psi with a safety factor of 4:1. The loud burst produced a perfect rupture at nearly 28,000 psi!
Anything that goes bang is fun, but… I was most impressed to speak with Joel Edwards, VP of Product Development, and his engineers who all share the same passion for getting students K-12 excited about careers in science and engineering. For more information about Gates Corporation, visit www.gates.com
Mixing 2,500 pounds of cornstarch with the kitchen mixer just didn’t work, so we had to find a cement truck… and a very cool cement truck mixing guy. Oh, and you also need three people who know exactly what the cornstarch mixer should feel like when it’s perfectly mixed. Jeff, Carly and Renee served as the mixologists while I called the producer at the Ellen Show to let him know that we were ready to roll to the studio.
It’s also a good idea to find someone in the audience who you’ve never met and trust that you won’t let them sink into a pit of cornstarch goo. Watch the Cornstarch Water Walk Video View more photos at The Science Behind the Goo – Photos from the Ellen Show
