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<p>WILKES-BARRE &#8212; First, the man in the conical wizard hat made a &#8220;Phoenix&#8221; egg spin on end from afar. Then he made lightening and burned paper. Then he made an aluminum ring rise by waving his wand while chanting &#8220;Wingardium Leviosa!&#8221;</p><p>And as any Harry Potter fan knows, it&#8217;s &#8220;levi-<em>O</em>-sa,&#8221; not &#8220;levio-<em>SA</em>.&#8221;</p><p>No, this wasn&#8217;t moments of magic, it was Wilkes University&#8217;s annual &#8220;Adventures in Science,&#8221; giving some 250 fifth-grade students a choice of five out of 13 different science labs, each lasting 25 minutes throughout Friday morning and early afternoon.</p><p>Yes, associate physics professor Del Lucent riffed regularly on the power of the famous teen wizard while giving demonstrations to his visitors, but he made the essential point early.</p><p>&#8220;I hope to prove that you guys are not muggles,&#8221; he told them, referring to the word describing non-magic people in the Harry Potter books. He cited science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke&#8217;s third rule: &#8220;Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.&#8221;</p><p>&#8220;The difference between a wizard and a muggle is your state of knowledge,&#8221; Lucent said. And &#8212; not surprisingly, considering his job &#8212; he suggested physics is at the heart of it all.</p><p>&#8220;Physics is the answer to everything,&#8221; he said. &#8220;Why didn&#8217;t you do your homework? Physics. Why didn&#8217;t you clean your room? Physics &#8212; especially the second law of thermodynamics.&#8221;</p><p>That would be the law of entropy: If no energy enters or leaves a system, the potential energy in the system declines. Or to put it another way, &#8220;I was too tired.&#8221;</p><p>Students periodically oohed and aahed as Lucent, wearing a gray wizard hat and twirling a wand, made an egg spin until it stood on end, then created &#8220;lightening&#8221; via what old-timers probably know as a &#8220;Jacob&#8217;s Ladder,&#8221; creating a spark gap between two rising metal electrodes.</p><p>&#8220;It is like a wire made of air,&#8221; he explained as the sparks flitted from one electrode to the other in an ever-rising arc until they ran out of metal to climb. When he asked if he should light a sheet of paper on fire with his &#8220;lightening,&#8221; the youngsters of course shouted &#8220;Yeah!&#8221; so he obliged with a very brief singe.</p><p>Lucent dumped a can of small metal objects between poles of a large magnet and the crowd gasped as they all got stuck between the poles, not a piece dropping to the table. He showed how an electromagnet could create a field trapped inside an aluminum ring to make the ring rise.</p><p>And he let the students &#8220;practice their own magic, seeing how long there own &#8220;leviosa&#8221; spells (he provided wands) would slow a pellet from falling down a long metal tube. Individually, they managed to delay it by up to about half a second. Then he got them all together to incant as one &#8212; and the pellet stayed in the tube for eight seconds.</p><p>How was that possible? You won&#8217;t learn the trick here. But you could consider studying more physics.</p><style>
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<div class="neCaption">Fifth grade students from area schools prepare to chant a &#8220;spell&#8221; intended to slow a pellet being dropped down a metal tube, one of several experiments physics associate professor Del Lucent (right, in &#8220;wizard&#8221; hat) conducted in his lab as part of Wilkes University&#8217;s &#8220;Adventures in Science&#8221; program, More than 250 students from area schools participated in several of 13 labs on campus last week. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo0>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/web1_adventures-in-science.jpg</photo0><caption0>Fifth grade students from area schools prepare to chant a &#8220;spell&#8221; intended to slow a pellet being dropped down a metal tube, one of several experiments physics associate professor Del Lucent (right, in &#8220;wizard&#8221; hat) conducted in his lab as part of Wilkes University&#8217;s &#8220;Adventures in Science&#8221; program, More than 250 students from area schools participated in several of 13 labs on campus last week. </caption0><photoCredit0></photoCredit0></div></div>
<div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p>By Mark Guydish</p><p>mguydish@www.timesleader.com</p></bylineMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><shirttailMeta><p>Reach Mark Guydish at 570-991-6112 or on Twitter @TLMarkGuydish</p></shirttailMeta></div>

From muggle to wizard: Wilkes unmasks mysteries of science for youngsters