I don’t know why this possibility did not occur to me before. So let me give you a heads up if you do demos in your lectures. In Physics 100 (which I taught last semester) and in Astro 100 especially, we do a lot of demos to demonstrate various physics concepts. I did a post on the Newton’s third law jet propulsion demo some time ago (linked photo right). My colleague Ed Rhodes did this same demo in his Astro 100 class.
He received an email from one of the students in the class recently saying “Congratulations, you’ve been YouTubed…”.
Apparently, one of the students in the class used his or her mobile phone camera to make a video of the demo, and uploaded it to YouTube! You can see it here, or clicking below:
What can I say? I’m going to have to talk to my agent about this new possibility. 
-cvj
On this day on Asymptotia...
- What Matters to KC Cole - 2008
- Upgraded - 2008
- Not Science Fiction - 2008
- Vaporstream or no Vaporstream? - 2007
- What Inspired You? - 2007
- Mathematics and Music - 2007
Some Related Asymptotia Posts (not exhaustive):
You can always embed YouTube videos, so folks don’t have to leave the site.
I know, but had not got around to it. But since you asked: Done. Cheers.
-cvj
I’ve attended this year’s annual Faraday Lecture at Rutgers, where Prof Mark Croft does some beautiful demos (the physics show is intended for children between the ages 5 and 110!) which includes the human rocket demo. He actually does a pretty good circular motion holding the fire-extinguisher. You can see the video here.
Most of the other demos are listed here.
That’s a great demonstration! I think the next time it snows, I may have to attempt this with a sled.
Patent the invention for safety! Issue a skateboard with every fire extinguisher! In a smoky fire you are told to keep down near the ground (because hot air/smoke rises), but crawling on hands and knees is slow and you can’t use a fire extinguisher easily at the same time … so in a fire, you should sit on a skateboard to put the fire out, and when it gets too bad, use the recoil to rapidly escape the danger area…