But using old equipment and leaving room for error can actually add to a demo rather than detract from it, said Douglass B. Goodale, another demo team member.

“By the nature of what we do, because we set things up quickly and because our apparatuses have to be portable, there’s more of an opportunity for experimental error,” he said. “Students see that science is not always the ideal world.”

Because the team members build most of their own equipment in an extensive machine room, they focus on creative solutions to complicated problems.

“Instead of spending all that time in lab adding equipment to make it work just right, we have to make it more clever,” Rosenberg said. “We ask ourselves, ‘how can we do the most with the least?’”

Even with the rise of technological tools, the team mainly relies on instruments they built or acquired years ago—though they do use computers to make quick measurements, project images, and create models.

“It’s good that we still have more antique apparatuses, like electroscopes, corktubes, and galvanometers,” said Allen R. Crockett, the fourth team member. “Things that have a historical place.”

RENAISSANCE MEN

Harvard has featured demonstrations in its lectures since the 1600s—Benjamin Franklin himself actually donated collections of electrical instruments to Harvard back in the day, Rueckner noted.

“The collection of lecture demos that we started with are actually demos we inherited from the original physics, chemistry, geology, and astronomy departments,” said Rueckner, who started helping with lecture demos in 1979, back when the university had only one man running the demo show.  Since 1988, the team has had four full-time members.

Rueckner, who teaches an Extension School physics course, holds a Ph.D. in atomic and molecular physics.  Goodale started his career as a physics researcher as well, but also brought six years of work as a carpenter to the table when he joined the team 20 years ago.

Rosenberg, who studied the physical sciences and says he’s “always been a maker of things,” and physics and computer science expert Crockett (who came aboard three years ago) round out the current crew.

Beyond courses, the team helps out with student organizations like ExperiMentors, Project Teach, the Harvard Foundation’s science seminar, and the mid-December Holiday Lectures, which have featured demos about chocolate, bacteria, and cholera.

“Every day is always something different—I enjoy being able to work with my hands, be on my feet, not just sit in a cubicle all day,” Crockett said.

RIPPLE TANKS & ROCKET CARS

The lecture demos office opens into an extensive machine room—replete with power tools, a welding station, and a lathe for shaping metals—which used to be run by a professional machinist who taught undergraduate classes in building and welding.