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Reprinted by permission of Dick Berg, University of Maryland, for use on this website.

The demonstrations contained and referenced herein are listed for the purposes of cataloging and describing physics demonstrations which should be conducted only under the direction of a trained instructional support professional or physicist. These demonstrations are not presented for the purpose of being conducted by persons unconnected to this Facility and/or persons not consulting with or being supervised by the recognized instructional support professional or physicist and his/her staff. The University is responsible only for those demonstrations carried out using its own equipment using established safety and scheduling policies, and bears no responsibility for those choosing to use this source material for their own purposes. All demonstrations described and contained herein are public domain, and can also be found in reference materials in libraries, bookstores, and electronic sources.

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Set the fish tank on the table. Fill this with water to a height of 6 1/2 inches above the table and you will have approximately 40 liters. Put the 10 lb. of charcoal into two large plastic beakers with the small sponge animals hidden in amongst the charcoal. The liquid nitrogen is picked up from Biochem Stores ahead of time. The rest of the chemicals can be measured out into their own separate petri dishes. Place the U.V. lights above and/or behind the tank. Have the electrodes all set up and ready to put into the tank when ready. Procedure: The Lecture Demonstration Coordinator helps with this experiment. Pour the charcoal into the tank of water. Now with stirring pour in the liquid nitrogen. A nice rolling fog will develop. Next add the sulfur (60 gr.), calcium (120 gr.), Phosphorus (Phosphoric acid - 13 ml.), and the trace minerals sodium, chlorine, iodine (Iodized Salt), potassium (Salt Substitute), iron, copper, zinc, (Metal filings), manganese (Manganese Oxide - MnO2), Silicon (Sand), Molybdenum and Florine (We usually do without these two).  Now we have all the ingredients to make life.  Add a little energy in the forms of U.V. radiation (U.V. Lights), and Lightning (Electrodes hooked to variac).  The light bulb is put in series with the electrodes so that you can see that current is flowing in the mixture.  At the end of lecture the teacher shut off and unplugs the variac and pulls out one of the sponge animals that was hidden in the charcoal, showing that indeed "life" was produced.

Caution:  Even when the variac is turned to the off position there is still some current flowing.  This is why you must unplug the variac before you stick your hand in the tank looking for "life".  Otherwise the possibility exists that you may also show how "life" is destroyed - YOUR OWN.