LCommon sense has long established the following ratio: a picture is worth a thousand words. An adage that seems even more true when we look at the illustrated science videos of Professor Bruce Yeany.
Besides the attention of YouTube walkers, what this amiable retired physics teacher is trying to catch on the wing in his Pennsylvania garden are raw eggs whizzing by at a speed exceeding that of a TGV (let’s put it a Paris-Angers). A little over 482 kilometers per hour. To do this, Mr. Yeany has at his disposal a compressed air cannon almost 4 meters long, a relatively isolated and secure wooded area in a residential suburb, and a seemingly inexhaustible (but don’t worry, they are expired). Its mission will therefore consist of projecting the gallinaceous warheads and then absorbing their kinetic energy so that the shell is not even cracked. We will discover in passing that a well-stirred egg can break sheet metal.
As one of the commentators of the experiment writes, whose happy outcome I do not hesitate to reveal to you – but here it is not only the result that counts -, Bruce Yeany can easily be described as “national treasure”. There is no doubt that his teaching approach must have done a lot for the popularity of science among his students over the course of his long career. Always this implacable image/word ratio, to which must correspond a fun experience/deadening theory ratio of the same order. While browsing his channel, we meet them here and there, captivated and laughing, testing the lifting capabilities of a giant air mattress, amazed by the prowess of a cucurbit catapult, methodically measuring the sound transmission levels of tin cans converted to corded handsets.
Wacky protocols
But let’s leave the precise and objective spaces of pure physical science to focus on the subjective side effects of Bruce Yeany’s experiments. Since it is now established that one cannot do either science or omelette without breaking eggs, who can describe this law which relates the accumulation of eccentric protocols to slow down projectiles (cardboard box lined with straw and mounted on wheels, pairs of tights lined with a parachute, pillows suspended above a yoga mat…) and the gigantic omnipotence of an ever more diligent Bruce? The laughs come naturally, those of one of his relatives who films his unsuccessful attempts to recover the net after bell shots. And then his own, when, after multiple disappointments with sheets of newspaper, he ends up triumphing, for a short moment, before accidentally letting the miraculous egg escape.
You have 35% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.