S CIENCE
The man they call
Dr. Wendel
H
e is actually Dr. Sam Wendel, to be totally correct. He has more than 50 years of experience in science. Wendel is not going to tell you, so we will. Sam is a scientist.
He was a scientist back in the 1960’s and worked in the Eli Lilly Company research department of the Elizabeth Arden division and then in the Process Research and Development division. Dr. Sam also blew up things in his Mad Science days - lots of flames and explosions. He will tell you about that, if you ask. “I guess I got started early,” Wendel says. “I did my first public science demonstration at age 15. Then I did the odd demonstration when the companies where I worked had an open house.” In 1992, Lilly had an open house, and he was part of a group asked to put on a show. “We did a thing called ‘Chemistry is a Blast’. That led to requests to do the show at schools.” Eventually, the “Blast” performances led to creating a crew that performed the show to an annual audience of 15,000. After retiring from Lilly, Wendel purchased a franchise business called Mad Science. “I operated Mad Science for 10 years. We did after-school programs, workshops, birthday parties, summer camps, hands-on science booths, and large group science shows.”
RIGHT: Dr. Wendel works his air/smoke
machine for the students.
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He closed the business in 2014.
