Skip to content If you watched the Mickey Mouse Club way back when, you might remember Professor Wonderful, who was, in reality, physics professor [Julius Sumner Miller]. He also had his own show, “Why Is It So?” along with appearances on talk shows. We recently ran across one of the shows from 1962 where [Miller] uses electromagnets to break a lamp. [Miller] moved to Australia, and this episode is from the Australian version of “Why Is It So?” As you might expect, given the topic, the professor covers Oersted and Faraday. We enjoyed not only the science but also the historical anecdotes. The professor’s delivery is interesting and entertaining, too. If you ever need to determine if an incandescent lamp is operating on AC or DC, the professor will show you how to employ a horseshoe magnet and, in fact, remotely destroys the lamp in the process. Once that’s done, the topic changes to chimneys and straws. Towards the end, the professor moves to acoustics, playing music and visualizing waveforms with sugar.…