Secret Science Club Post-Event Recap

Last night, the Secret Science Club hosted Rutgers University physics support specialist and experimenter extraordinaire David Maiullo in a program that could best be described as "an entire year of high school physics in an hour-and-a-half... WITH FLAMES!!!!!"

David and his assistant John began with a series of experiments demonstrating classical mechanics. His first "stunt" was the classic demonstration of inertia with the tablecloth trick. He demonstrated Newton's Second Law by lining up a sponge, a wood block, and a lead brick on a table, and hitting each with a hammer- launching the sponge into the audience, the wood block off the table, and hardly moving the lead brick at all. Force equalling mass times acceleration, an equal force was able to "accelerate" the lower mass objects more than the higher mass objects. He demonstrated Newton's Third Law (for every action, there is an opposite and equal reaction) by propelling himself on a cart with a cannister of carbon dioxide. Ah, enough of my yapping, here's a video of a physics demonstration- David Maiullo is the muscular gentleman in the T-shirt:





One of the highlights of the demonstration dealt with a visualization of sound waves WITH FIRE!!!!!





Here's David's "singing bowl" demonstration:





I had the benefit of watching these demonstrations at the beautiful Bell House, while quaffing pints of beer. Beer, science, and FIRE!!!! Hell, he even "popped" hydrogen-filled balloons with a blowtorch... FOR SCIENCE!!!! What could possibly be better?

David Maiullo has been tapped to host the upcoming series Humanly Impossible on the National Geographic channel. Show the man some L-U-V because he's an all-around great guy. Plus, he's doing the Good Work, bringing his demonstrations to university-level physics classes, elementary school classes, and beer-guzzling nightclub patrons. His current assistant, John, is finishing up his degree in science education and will be teaching high school physics in the fall. Hopefully, he'll get a spinoff show, maybe a sitcom about a young physics teacher.

I have to say, also, that while I am totes het, David and John are pretty damn hunky- they're the kind of hunky science guys that one usually associates with the casts of science-fiction thrillers or the faculties of New Zealand universities. I am saying this in totally hetero fashion, mind you.