About Jearl Walker
Jearl Walker, professor of physics at Cleveland State University, received his BS in physics from MIT in 1967 and his PhD in physics from University of Maryland in 1973. Since then he has been at Cleveland State.
The original version of The Flying Circus of Physics was published 30 years ago, has been translated into at least 10 languages, and is still being sold world wide. For 16 years he toured his Flying Circus talk throughout the U.S. and Canada, introducing such physics stunts as the bed-of-nails demonstration and the walking-on-hot-coals demonstration to countless physics teachers, who then proceeded to hurt themselves when they repeated the stunts in their classrooms. These talks led to his PBS television show Kinetic Karnival, which ran nationally for years and which landed him a local Emmy, now proudly displayed on the toilet in his first-floor bathroom.
During his13 years with Scientific American magazine, he wrote 152 articles for “The Amateur Scientist” section, which were translated into at least 9 languages world wide. His topics ranged from the physics of judo to the physics of béarnaise sauce and lemon meringue pies. In 1990, he took over the textbook Fundamentals of Physics from David Halliday and Robert Resnick and has not had a full night’s sleep since.
He has lost count of the number of times he has been on television and radio and interviewed for newspapers and magazines. However, he clearly remembers the 20 minutes he spent with Johnny Carson on the Tonight Show, where he stuck his fingers into molten lead without losing any of them, to the great relief of his mother who was at home watching the show.
Physics Department at Cleveland State University:
http://www.csuohio.edu/physics/CSUPhys.html
Do you see the link "Faculty members" at the upper right of the department's home page? Follow it to find my resume and two old essays about the bed of nails stunt. To see photos of the stunt, go to the College of Science page
http://sciences.csuohio.edu/print_gallery.php?key=Physics+in+Action%3A+Jearl+Walker
Amanda Beach stands on top of me while I'm sandwiched between two beds of nails.
To see more photos (from the talks I have given recently), scroll down through the FCP blog site that is linked in the menu on the left side of this screen.
To see some of my appearances on "The Daily Planet" on the Discovery Channel Canada, with host Jay Ingram, first jump to this page here in the FCP web site and then follow the link.
http://www.flyingcircusofphysics.com/News/NewsDetail.aspx?NewsID=33