Beehler, who is the Lecture Demonstration Specialist for the Department of Physics & Astronomy, manages the university’s large collection of demonstration equipment, runs demonstrations for instructors and teaches a class of his own, entitled The Way Things Work, a kind of physics show-and-tell.

The concepts he demonstrates are old – one law that predicts the effects of electromagnetism dates back to 1834 – and don’t really change, but he says the job doesn’t get old.

“No, I like the concept so much this doesn’t get boring to me,” Beehler said.

To demonstrate the pressure of our atmosphere, he puts a student (all but his head) in a plastic bag and evacuates the air inside. With the pressure of the atmosphere pressing down on him, the students cannot move.

To show that pressure in a confined liquid is transferred throughout, aka “Pascal’s Principle”, a student on a leaf-blower-powered hovercraft floats across the classroom floor.

The semester ends with his big finale. Also, Sprach Zarathustra (also the theme from “2001 – A Space Odyssey”) plays.

Beehler holds two fluorescent tubes and inches them towards a large Van de Graaff generator until they attract loud, crackling bolts of purple lightning, hundreds of thousands of volts, lighting up the bulbs and turning the teacher into a modern-day Zeus.

The demonstration generates laughter and a round of applause.

“Sometimes the students will think, ‘Oh, that’s magic.’ Physics seems like magic. It’s just magic of the universe. It just naturally works that way,” he said.

Below: Watch the KSL-TV video of the above story and experience the magic of Beehler.