Why is it so?
by Emma Sartwell

His name is Julius Sumner Miller and physics is his business.
In his own inverted, grammatically-Lithuanian, accentually-Bostonian sentences, he reveals, “how Nature behaves, without cluttering its beauty with abstruse mathematics.” This task involves many a rise from one of his thick graying arrows of eyebrow tufts, many an emphatic “ho ho ho!” (more Gargamel of the Smurfs, whose inspiration was Miller, than Santa Claus), one blue shirt that dissolves right into the blue wall of a background, and perhaps a cigarette or a whiskey bottle.
With his trademark candor, uninhibited by structural norms or preconceived figures of speech, Miller won the hearts of many in his Australian television program, which he describes in his 1989 autobiography, The Days of My Life: “My first TV series on demonstrations in physics – titled “Why Is It So?” [is] now seen and heard over the land.” From 1963, when “Why Is It So?” first aired in Australia, to 1986, when it ended, to the present, when it airs in various spots around the world (like Phil Brauer’s physics classroom) and Australian citizens reportedly continue to approach each other with the fundamental unanswerable question, “Why is it so?”, Miller has made quite a respectable splash over the land. He has shown its people innumerable physics experiments, unencumbered by laborious explanations. For this, Miller says, “[The academics] charged me with being superficial and trivial. If I had done what they wanted, my programs would be as dull as their classes!”
And dull Miller certainly was not. Even his name reflects his sarcastic view of academic traditionalism and romanticized idea of “mad physicists” with names like Julius and a soft spot for phrases like ‘I blow my stack!’ In one experiment, he tells us to “consider this, which I call the mad professor’s head,” and points proudly to a little ball of fabric strips which he makes stand on end through the powers of static electricity. “Oh mother! That is incredible!” he would say. Or, “Whaoo… hold it Nelly!”
After an eerily Twilight Zone-esque musical prelude, accompanied by a shaky image of a socketless eyeball, Miller greets his audience in a raspy, “Hello boys and girls, mothers and fathers.” He pauses briefly, then adds an inclusive, “and people.”
Miller’s intense curiosity and observance is obvious from his furrowed brow. Actually his whole face tends to furrow together, aiming like a flashlight toward his rapidly-changing but inexorable object of concentration.
“I am going to do an amazing thing!” he exclaims of his current article of attention. He’ll proceed to blow bubbles on his show, aired only in black and white, to demonstrate the color spectrum. Or manually light a halogen bulb through the powers of electrostatics and bombard his audience, “Did you see the lamp? Did it show on the television? Did it show?” Well, not exactly, but we trust him.
One episode of “Why Is It So?” is based entirely around “rub[bing] some stuff with some stuff.” After rubbing a rubber rod, Miller can successfully make cork dust “jump away! Jump away!” This, of course, merits nothing less than a “ho ho ho!”
From the rate at which he rants, it’s apparent Miller thinks faster than he can talk. One might assume that’s why his sentences come out so delightfully Yoda-style.
But it is not so. Even in his writing, like his multiple books of “Millergrams”, in which he proposes numerous physical conundrums, or in his autobiography, his syntax is endearingly convoluted. “How tall a mirror do you need to see all of you?” he asks. Or take this charming anecdote: “We are now at the eating place on a river-bank with outdoor tables. At one such sits a young man with his girl. On the tablecloth rest the usual paraphernalia, meaning the articles for the purpose at hand.”
Miller may seem informal and a tad inane, but only a scientist would note that picnickers brought the usual paraphernalia (meaning the articles for the purpose at hand).
In the same vein, Miller has been known to flail beakers and the like about his sharp-featured face, “with absolute abandon!!” He has been known to do a demonstration “once more! Because I like it!” He has been known to pull a cigarette out of his pocket, and employ its smoke for physical reactions.
If there is one sure thing in this world, it is this: put a wizening Bostonian physicist babbling about what dissection means (“It’s not dissection when you cut up mollusks and cats and things!”) and lighting a cigarette in front of a class of high school students, and you will have their attention. They may even learn something. Conversely, put a ditto-distributing, AP exam-blinded cyborg in front of a class of high-school students and they will have a nice hour-and-a-half mid-day siesta.
Not to advocate smoking, but there’s a reason we’re not taught by computers, and it is stomach-churning to watch students’ steady decline into spending thirty-five hours a week at a keyboard or above a Scantron, filling out practice multiple-choice questions, employing powers of deduction and pneumatic devices and making their mark heavy and dark and you know, statistically, C is the safest answer, and you won’t be penalized for wrong answers on the write-in math section. It’s off-putting to watch students choose SAT cram sessions over an American History class, but the fault doesn’t belong solely to the disassociated student or the college-fixated parent. High school classes have turned into nothing more than extended SAT cram sessions taught by teachers who aren’t aloud to be human beings with quirks and preferences and demonstrations that may not go quite as planned.
But no one would mistake a Julius Sumner Miller Lesson for standardized-test preparation, and there would be no choice as to which would be more beneficial to attend.
Sometimes his experiments don’t work. Sometimes Julius polls the audience and many don’t care how his experiments will turn out. Sometimes you really can’t discern where his robin’s egg shirt ends and the backdrop begins.
Perhaps being politically correct is more sophisticated; perhaps learning is learning no matter if it’s dropping lit candles on the floor to see how the flames will react or writing a five-paragraph, three-point essay in forty-five minutes; perhaps the correct response is C. But learning is not synonymous with memorization or with life-dulling disaffecting monotony, for that matter. Sometimes you have to go rub some stuff with some stuff or start employing absolute abandon with some flasks and see what happens. And if your experiment doesn’t work, there’s nothing a hearty “ho ho ho!” won’t fix.