From: tjc50@juts.ccc.amdahl.com (Terry Carroll)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban,sci.electronics
Subject: Jearl Walker (was: SHOCKING STORIES)
Date: 12 Aug 92 21:54:43 GMT
Reply-To: tjc50@juts.ccc.amdahl.com (Terry Carroll)
Organization: Amdahl Corporation


> arielle@taronga.com (Stephanie da Silva) writes:
> > I read an article in an issue of Scientific American a few years
> > back about an innovative physics teacher (don't remember his name,
> > sorry) who took this demonstration to more of an extreme.  He would
> > dip his entire hand in some sort of hot melted metal substance.  Very
> > quickly, of course, and after he had thoroughly soaked his hand
> > in water first.

His name was (and still is) Jearl Walker, a Physics Professor at Cleveland 
State University, who also wrote the column "The Amateur Scientist" for 
Scientific American.  Jearl (he claims references like "Dr. Walker" give him 
impotence, and demands that all his students call him by his first name; 
really bugs the other stuffy profs in the department who have to go along 
with it) was my physics prof, my only claim to fame (aside from being an 
a.f.u Terry, of course).

He did the molten-lead-hand-dip in my class.  He also did the hot coal walk, 
but was badly injured once, and stopped doing it live unless paid large 
amounts of money.  He now shows a video tape in class, rather than performing 
it there.

The most memorable appearance I remember of him was on the old Tonight Show 
Starring Johnny Carson, where he tried to explain the principle behind haning 
spoons from one's nose.  He was somewhat more adept at it than Johhny and Ed.

The best in-person demonstration he did was in class, discussing gravity.  He 
went to the top of the auditorium and showed slides of things falling, 
demonstrating how the downward and forward vectors were independent of one 
another (bombs falling in straight lines, etc.).  Afterwards, he removed the 
slide tray and ran down the steep aisle.  About 8 or so steps before the 
grouns level, he slipped and did a tremendous fall, in which he fell more or 
less directly on his face; his glasses flew off, and the slides went 
_everywhere_.  He laid motionless for several seconds, and then resumed the 
lecture from the ground:  "When I missed that step, my body accellarated 
downward at 9.8 meters per second squared, independently of the forward 
velocity which I had from my running...", etc.

The most memorable question on the exam was calculating if King Kong really 
could walk if he really was ten times the size of a man (applying the cube-
square rule, in that the volume goes up as a square of the increase (i.e. 10 
times the height = 1000 times the weight), while the surface area of the 
cross section of the support merely goes up as the square (= 100 times the 
surface area)).  Yes the ansewr was that King Kong could walk gingerly, but 
any jumping about would fracture his legs from his own weight.  The most 
common mistake people made on this one (I didn't, but I managed to make every 
other conceivable mistake on his exam, and only escaped the final semester 
with a generous D) was remembering that King Kong had two legs, and hence 
double the support of a single leg.

Ah, the good old college days, when all we did was program, calculate King 
Kong, and drink Zombies (on weekends when we got paid) or grain alcohol mixed 
with grapefruit juice (on weekends when we didn't).

Terry Carroll - tjc50@juts.ccc.amdahl.com - 408/992-2152
The opinions presented above are not necessarily those of a sound mind.