Walk Through Paper, Heat Spiral and more

S1 E3: Homemade Volcano -Michael has made a volcano out of paper mache, vinegar, and baking soda. Mr. Wizard's is made of asbestos paper. Michael fills the crater of the model with ammonium dichromate and Mr. Wizard adds broken up sparklers (Michael calls them sparklees). They add a gunpowder fuse. Michael lights the fuse while Mr. Wizard turns out the lights. The model erupts with flashes of fire and sparks. Dropper Diver - A medicine dropper is suspended in a transparent plastic bottle filled with water. Mr. Wizard contends it is a magic medicine dropper that rises and falls on command. Gia is doubtful. How Many Stars? -When you look up at the sky at night, how many stars can you see? On a moonless night with no clouds you could count as many as 3,000 stars but that is not even the half of it. On the other side of the earth you could count 3,000 more. Heat Spiral - Billy describes a Christmas ornament that works on the same principle as the paper heat spiral going around on top of a lamp. Mr. Wizard shows him how to make the spiral out of paper. They examine a spool and pencil set on top of a lamp shade. A needle has been inserted into the eraser. On the needle he places a needle and sets it spinning to show that the combination is a good bearing because there is little friction. He adds the paper spiral to the thimble. It spins because the light bulb heats the air around it making the air expand. Heat From Your Body - Stacey examines a chart with the recommended number of calories for boys and girls of varying ages. Stacey is 12 years old so she needs 1,200 calories per day. They are going to illustrate each form of heat transfer using a hot electric iron. If she touched the iron, heat would be transferred to it by conduction; hand over hot iron, convection; alcohol on hand feels cool, evaporation; hand near iron, radiation. Paper Fold - Warren is challenged to fold a piece of paper more than eight times. Warren knows the trick and folds it only six times. Computer Plane - This is an outline of the supersonic airplane but not a real one. It’s a mathemati­cal model of the plane that was fed into a computer along with the calculated stresses on the surfaces indicated by the various colors. With the computer controls, the model can be rotated and flexed to see what happens to the stresses. Walk Through Paper - Leila is told to cut a hole in an 8½ by 11‑inch piece of paper big enough to walk through. She says it's impossible and cuts a large circular hole which obviously is much too small to walk through. Mr. Wizard shows her a pattern of cuts that are a series of slits resembling a maze. After making the cuts, the opening is large enough to put over her head and down over her body. She steps out of it. Mr. Wizard produces a paper already cut with slits that are closer together. They drape the cut paper around the doorway. The hole is large enough for Leila to jump through.