Beakman’s World - Season 1 Episode 10

Taking a question from a student puzzled by levers, Beakman uses a teeter-totter and a large boulder to explain how these simple machines work. Noting that there are first, second and third class levers, Beakman goes on to describe their essential parts — the fulcrum, the resistance and the effort — and why their relative positions determine how levers are classified. Then, with help from Lester and Josie, he demonstrates some common levers used everyday — pliers & scissors (first class), wheelbarrows & bottle openers (second class), and hammers & golf clubs (third class). In "Beak-Mania," Beakman reveals the length of the longest tapeworms (32 feet), the amount of electricity it takes to operate the human brain (10 watts), and the number of teeth in a snail (up to 25,000). For the "Beakman Challenge," Lester is asked to balance a pair of forks on the tip of a toothpick. Puzzled with this seemingly impossible task, Lester watches as Beakman connects the forks and sets them atop a toothpick which he then balances on the tip of another inserted in a salt shaker. Asked how television works, Beakman conjures up Philo T. Farnsworth, the young genius who conceived the idea when he was only 14 years old and produced the first TV in 1927 at the age of 21. After using a walkie-talkie to show how transmitters and receivers work, Farnsworth enlists Josie to demonstrate how a TV uses a set of lines on its screen to reproduce a video camera's pictures. Finally, with a simple flipbook, Beakman shows that anyone can replicate how a television turns still images into a moving picture.