It is a sad day for all science-loving children everywhere; we have lost our leader, Mr. Wizard.

I never saw his first show due to not being born yet, but I was a huge fan of his Nickelodeon show in the 80’s.  I loved trying to recreate the experiments, though I often missed the finer points (such as, say, having the correct ingredients) and they didn’t work as well as they did on tv.  I did have a very successful one, though, that I repeated many a time.

I didn’t call it such at the time, but in retrospect, a good name for this experiment is “Turd in the Pool.”

TURD IN THE POOL

You will need:

Water
Finely ground black pepper
A small bowl
Hand soap or hand dishwashing detergent

1.  Fill the bowl with water.
2.  Sprinkle a generous amount of pepper on the water; it will float (I bet my dad always wondered where all the pepper was getting off to).
3.  Put a small dab of soap or detergent on your finger.
4.  Touch the center of the water.  All the pepper will dash off to the edges.

Get it?  Because the pepper represents kids and the water and bowl represent the pool, and your soapy finger represents a turd.  Everybody wants to get out of the pool.

The science behind it had to do with surface tension; I’m afraid I don’t remember the details, but that was a really fun experiment.  I wonder if I could get those shows on DVD anywhere.  I hope I have little nerdy children someday who would enjoy that sort of thing.

Thanks for everything, Mr. Wizard.