One has to marvel at the wonder of the internet. A mere 24 hours after my post about Kenneth Hickman, Andrew Davidhazy, who worked with Hickman more than forty years ago, has unearthed and posted to YouTube a 10 minute video of a study of thermal convection in liquids that they made together way back when.
The video is fascinating because, aside from the fact that Hickman himself is briefly visible about 2 minutes in, it provides a detailed description of the Schlieren technique that had been developed in the last century by another one of my Classic Kit heroes, August Töpler, in extraordinary his studies of shock waves.
Kenneth Hickman is my grandfather! He had one son and two daughters– and one of those daughters is my mom! How cool to see Papa’s experiments come to life on the internet. Thanks for contributing to my understanding of my grandfather!
I’m utterly delighted to hear from you. I’m very grateful to your family for the information. Your father did some fascinating science and developed some very neat apparatus which completely transformed the supplements industry. And if you’ve read his memoirs, they are hilarious.
Great video – it really brings the story to life!
Reblogged this on engaging TALK and commented:
I came across Andrea Sella’s blog today (I saw him at the Haymarket Theatre Royal with Festival of the Spoken Nerd a few weeks ago, and he was BRILLIANT). I really love this old film demonstrating the Schlieren technique (!) – something I never thought I needed to know, but was fascinating all the same!