NeutralAxis

Can you imagine this guy as your 8th grade science teacher?  Amazing!  When I watched this TED Talk by Clifford Stoll, I couldn’t help but think of the Tigger song.

A wonderful thing is a Tigger;
A Tigger’s a wonderful thing.
Their tops are made out of rubber,
their bottoms are made out of spring
They’re bouncy, bouncy, bouncy, bouncy,
fun, fun, fun, fun, fun,
The most wonderful thing
about Tiggers is:
I’m the only one.

My first introduction to Clifford Stoll was at least 10 years ago when I read his book, The Cuckoo’s Egg, about the episode he mentions in this video of catching Soviet hackers breaking into Lawrence Livermore Lab.  I don’t think I’d ever actually seen him speak before this TED Talk.

In addition to showcasing a unique personality, in the video he demonstrates an amazingly simple means of measuring the speed of sound with an oscilloscope, microphone, and a tape measure (starts at 12:00).  He really gets the crowd going when he pulls out a slide rule to do some multiplication.