Heinz Wolff has died | Hacker News Reader

Heinz Wolff has died

bbc.co.uk

123 pointsmadaxe_again20 comments

For all we have some pretty good science programming in the UK, what with Jim Al-Khalili, Brian Cox, Sky at Night and more, we're missing the Heinz Wolff and Johnny Ball style characters who bring their subjects alive for children.

It'd be great to have a science-based equivalent to Horrible Histories.

It's designed for children but Absolute Genius is pretty good.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/cbbc/shows/absolute-genius-with-dick-a... (UK only)

Perhaps not targeted at children specifically but probably child friendly (PG?) I enjoyed the Great War series on YouTube. It is giving a week by week account of the events in WW1 as it happened 100 years ago. I haven’t kept up to date with it as it’s a serious commitment but it is a great concept.

I thought Bang Goes The Theory was rather good ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bang_Goes_the_Theory ) but I guess it's not really necessarily presented in a way for younger children.

For older children or adults, "Everyday Miracles" had only 2 episodes but they were both pretty good. Also the presenter was really doing experiments and going around factories where they make stuff showing exactly how things are made.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04fh5tf

I recall meeting him at a Royal Society Christmas lecture when I was a teen. I was sat in the front row - and he asked for a volunteer. Needless to say, muggins volunteered - to stick his naked hand in a flask of liquid nitrogen, it transpired.

And this is how I first experienced the Leidenfrost effect, and understood just how effectively boiling liquids can self-insulate.

He was an astoundingly good teacher, and an inspiration, to me, at least.

That could have gone quite wrong no?

Just don't leave your hand in there for too long.

And try to avoid any liquid nitrogen droplets getting caught between your shirt cuff and your wrist (cold burns hurt)

OA: I shall miss Dr Wolf.

He was very clear about dipping my hand in slowly, and not moving it at all, as that would’ve shaken off the boundary and resulted in frostnip - but this was the 90’s, when getting kids to put their hand in cryo was just one of those things you do.

A number of episodes of The Great Egg Race are available on the BBC Archive: http://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/great_egg_race/

Wonderful stuff. RIP.

Oh - he was a contestant an episode of on The Adventure Game, which is now available on DVD. Stands up very well to the test of time.

Very sad news. "The Great Egg Race" was a TV show I often think would lend itself well to revival.

Hear hear on both counts.

Its gentle rivalry and lack of melodrama would be great to see again. It would need a new presenter now of course, and they’d be pretty big shoes to fill.

I fear that that spot is taken by Robowars now.

They're not even robots...

This is very sad news.

I loved seeing Heinz Wolff on TV as a child for two reasons.

First, like Johnny Ball, it was great to see a quirky, odd shaped personality on TV instead of the usual slick drama school, artsy or journalist types.

For a nerdy kid like me Heinz was a wonderfully fun roll model.

Second, Heinz was German. In a country where sections of the media* still go on about the Second World War at every political dealing with modern Germany, Heinz was a well known “nice German”.

People like Heinz Wolff, Bauhaus and Kraftwerk made me a deutschophile. The irony that he came to England from Germany as a Jewish refugee is not lost on me.

*(My family lost my grandfather and two others fighting but it’s ridiculous how the tabloids still blame current generations of Germans for the past whilst pushing their own dodgy agendas).

That's rather sad. I was one of the children that he inspired with his remarkable works. I shall off to Youtube to re-watch some.

A very sad loss, and it's a great shame that we didn’t get more of The Great Egg Race. I met him briefly while working as an assistant at Space School at Brunel University one year.

I once attended a lecture he gave to an international audience. However the Americans in the room complained that they couldn't understand anything he said.

Bear to the right!

Lets pray that he is in a better place

I did not really know much of him, but enough, that this sentence

"A Jewish refugee, Wolff moved to the UK from Berlin at the age of 11 on the day World War Two broke out in September 1939"

annoyed me very much. F____ stupid Nazis. By wanting to make Germany great again, they destroyed so much of it ...

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