Learning Science: Ep1 Transcript

LEARNING SCIENCE
Episode 1: “Science Demonstrations”

Speakers:

DL — Daniel Leonard

NA — Nick Amador

SS — Sara Schechner

WR — Wolfgang Rueckner

DR — Daniel Rosenberg

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[Intro music.]

DL: Hello and welcome, everyone! My name is Daniel —

NA: And I’m Nick —

DL: And this is the first episode in our three-part series on the history of science education.

NA: That’s right. Now, today, when we think about learning science, we often think about the

classroom. In fact, when we say the phrase “learning science,” you might have flashbacks to

figures on a chalkboard or your high school chemistry lab, for example.

DL: Definitely. But besides the classroom, there are plenty of other ways that people learn

science — and these ways have evolved throughout recent history. Our podcast is all about

examining these different methods of science education.

NA: In our third and final episode, we’ll be looking at YouTube as a platform for science

education. In our second episode, we’ll focus on science in the classroom. But, in this first

episode, we’ll be jumping back a few hundred years...

[Sounds of Victorian-era street.]

DL: Back in the late 1700s, science as we understand it today was really starting to take off.

People were forming theories, performing experiments in their personal laboratories, and

publishing the results.

NA: But, when people wanted to share their findings with a broader audience, they would often

rely on public demonstrations. These demos allowed people to convey their research in an

exciting and easy-to-understand way.

DL: Science demonstrations were hugely popular in Enlightenment-era Europe and beyond.

Since 1825, for example, the British Royal Institution has incorporated science demos into its

annual Christmas Lecture series, viewing these demonstrations as a great way to get the public

engaged with science.

NA: And in the 1700s, science demos were typically performed in classrooms or even out in

public. With tools like pendula and air pumps, experts could demonstrate all sorts of scientific

principles across various different disciplines.

DL: But perhaps no scientific subfield was as conducive to demonstration as that of electricity.

We recently sat down with Dr. Sara Schechner, Curator of Harvard’s Collection of Historical

Scientific Instruments. She told us about one science demonstration device in the Collection of

Instruments that was particularly... explosive.

[Transition sound.]

DL: We were hoping you could just start by telling us: What is the Collection of Historical

Scientific Instruments, for people who might not know?

SS: Sure. So, the Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments has about 25,000 scientific

instruments dating from about the 16th century — maybe a few earlier stragglers — up through

into the 20th century. And, a lot of the material was acquired by Harvard for research or

teaching. And other objects in the collection have come to us through gifts. We collect

everything from instruments of astronomy, physics, biology, experimental psychology and

mathematics and navigation and surveying instruments. And so a whole raft of things.

NA: Are any of these objects from the collection still in use today?

SS: We have sometimes used them for classes or an event. To use the same telescope, for

example, that John Winthrop used to look at the transit of Venus. We pulled it out for the most

recent transit of Venus in 2004.

DL: There was one particular object from the Collection that Nick and I wanted to ask you about,

and that’s the thunder house. We know that thunder houses were used in electricity

demonstrations. But we wanted to ask you – what exactly is a thunder house, and what is it

meant to demonstrate?”

SS: Sure. So, a Thunder House is a little model house. It can sometimes be a profile of like the

front of a church or a building with parts that stack on each other. And then the roof is a separate

unit that can be sat on top of the walls and has a steeple. And at the top of the steeple you'll have

a brass rod going up, which is your lightning rod. And then it comes down its wire along the side

of the house to an islet, where one can put a chain of metal that will touch the ground — to

literally ground the lightning rod. And you put gunpowder in the house, and you can run a bunch

of experiments. If you have everything grounded — if you use your electrical machine, its

charge, bring it near the point on the lightning rod, you'll see nothing happen.

So you do that and everything is fine. Now, you remove the — you break the ground by

removing this little block. Everything's still the same with the gunpowder in the house. And you

charge up your electrical machine, you bring the discharging rod over to the lightning rod on the

thunder house, and now you'll get a big spark and the whole house will blow up. And the roof

flies off and the sides collapse. And there's a big flash of light. And big noise. And everything is,

you know, in pieces. It's a demonstration, very readily, of the nature of lightning rods. And how

they need to be grounded. And why you shouldn't store, you know, gunpowder in your church

unless you have lightning rods up on top.

NA: When did scientific demonstrations like the thunder house first become popular?

SS: In the 18th century, the idea of lecture demonstrations really gets off the ground for the first

time. And it’s part of a courtly culture and middle class culture to go and see these

demonstrations. As well as in the scientific meetings — they would do an experiment or

demonstration in front of a number of witnesses, who would discuss what’s happening — what if

we did this, what if we did that? Harvard was very early in engaging in these kinds of

demonstrations in the class of natural philosophy — much earlier than most other contemporary

colleges. As part — but one of the reasons was that the best way to educate students is to

entertain them. And the thunder house really would wake up a class. You know, who doesn’t

love to blow up things? And I think it becomes more memorable, too.

It’s really a radical change to have that — the educational demonstration — that comes about in

the 18th century. Because prior to the 18th century, all classes were lecture and recitation. The

professor would get up, he’d lecture. People would then take notes. Then they would recite back

their notes from memory or whatever to the tutor. And then it would be another day of that. It’s a

much richer experience.

DL: Well that’s everything from me.

NA: Yeah, thank you for agreeing to meet with us. This was wonderful.

SS: No problem!

[Transition sound.]

NA: Learning about the thunder house gives us a great understanding of what 18th-century

science demonstrations were like. But, of course, science demonstrations continue to be a

powerful tool for the teaching of science into the modern day.

DL: That’s right. Today, we can find science demos in museums, as part of classroom curricula,

or even on television and the internet. But, while the platforms are different, not everything has

changed since the 1700s. In fact, some modern science demonstrations are strikingly similar to

the ones that were performed hundreds of years ago.

NA: To find out why, let’s listen to Daniel Rosenberg and Wolfgang Rueckner of Harvard’s

Natural Science Demonstrations group.

[Transition sound.]

DL: What is the Harvard Natural Science Lecture Demonstrations group? What is it that you

guys do?

WR: We were – “we were,” I say, because I’m retired now – we were a group of four scientists

that provide lecture demonstrations for classrooms and lectures. We develop demonstrations, we

come up with new ones, we work with faculty to provide new demonstrations.

NA: What’s your favorite science demonstration that you’ve ever either designed or gotten the

chance to execute?

DR: I would say the flame tornado, where we take a turntable and put a 3-inch diameter can in

the center of that, full of isopropyl alcohol. When you start to spin the turntable, you get this sort

of rotating chimney effect, where the flame from the cup just rises up in a tornado.

DL: We recently spoke to Dr. Sara Schechner about thunder houses, and we learned that you

guys use a replica thunder house in some of your demonstrations. Can you tell us more about

how that got started?

DR: We got a call from the Museum of Historical Scientific Instruments, and they said, “Do you

have this thing, this thunder house?” And I said, “Of course we do, we use it a couple times

every year!” And they sort of went, “Guh! That’s a little bit historic right now! We need to take

that off your hands.” And I said, “Well, we still need to have a thunder house.” We have a shop

in the back, so I said, “You know what, this would be a really interesting project.” So I had the

privilege of putting on my white gloves and bringing measuring instruments to the museum. This

is a thunder house from the 18th century that Ben Franklin actually used. And I made three

thunder houses based on those drawings.

WR: I just want to say that the Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments has always been an

inspiration to me, because of the craftsmanship and beauty of these experiments. That, you

know, they’re works of art, not just tools of science.

NA: How much wear-and-tear does the thunder house go through during a typical

demonstration? Like how much can you get out of one?

DR: You can get a lot. Actually, the most wear and tear that it gets is if the roof pops up and falls

on the floor. The explosion is on the order of popping a balloon, right. So, things kind of go

“Poof” – a little bit of cloud and smoke and a little bit of fire shooting this way. It’s impressive

looking, but it’s not a particularly dangerous demonstration.

NA: Still, how do people react to seeing that?

DR: There’s usually a gasp. Because it just, “Boomph,” goes. And the smell of black powder is

all sulfurous. It’s very dramatic. I love it.

DL: Daniel, before we were recording, you were talking a little bit about what it’s like to do

demos over Zoom these days. Could you talk a little bit about that – how that’s different, or the

same?

DR: It’s funny. There are a lot of similarities. You know, I had thought that it might not have the

immediacy. In the normal times, we would set up cameras on things that were too small to see

for the rest of the lecture hall. Now we set up cameras for everything. And they plug into the

laptop, and we can switch back and forth to the camera feed for the Zoom. Unmute myself, we

have a conversation about what’s happening. It’s actually a live experience. And I think it’s more

powerful than I expected it to be.

DL: Why do you think that scientific demonstrations are important to the process of learning

science? Cause, Wolfgang, you mentioned that it’s not something you even had in your

undergraduate career.

WR: Right. And I wish I did. I wish I did. I think they are just a wonderful teaching tool, if used

properly. You get to see something live in person — not just a photograph in your textbook or a

slide up on the screen or just a drawing. You get to see this real thing. And then, depending on

how it’s used — it’s used most effectively if, instead of just showing it and seeing how it works,

you get the audience involved. This interactive learning. You might also turn it into a problem to

solve. You know, there might be something about it that you can calculate. Or, if you can’t do it,

what’s missing? What extra thing do you need to do to be able to figure out something else? So,

it can really be a powerful tool – not just as something that’s fun to see, but as something that

you can really learn from.

[Transition sound.]

NA: Demonstrations really are an exciting way to learn science. Do you have any science demos

that stick out in your mind, Daniel?

DL: The hammer and the feather, Galileo experiment. I think it’s something that he had

theorized about, but was never able to do because it requires to be done in a vacuum.

NA: A vacuum, yeah.

DL: I know that one of the Apollo missions did it on the Moon.

NA: Really? I didn’t know they did that there. Oh, sick.

DL: Yeah. I think that’s part of the reason it’s so famous. One of the Apollo missions brought a

bunch of experiments, and one of them was they brought a feather and a hammer. And they drop

them. This is all televised, so millions of people are watching this I think. And, yeah, they land

right at the same time. And they say something like “Galileo was right” on TV.

NA: Once we have our Moon base or our Moon colony there’s gonna be a big open market for

science demonstrators.

DL: That’s true, yeah. But, in our next episode, we’ll consider the more traditional way that

people learn about science.

NA: So tune in for episode two — “Science in the Classroom” — which will be led by myself

and our third host, Harrison.

DL: We hope to see you there!

[Outro music.]