I seriously doubt they emptied the huge vacuum chamber for this experiment. Most likely it was used for some other experiment and it was very cheap to do this e

I seriously doubt they emptied the huge vacuum chamber for this experiment. Most likely it was used for some other experiment and it was very cheap to do this experiment as well. As to answer your actual question, because it's very televisual (this was for a TV show, after all) and sells well. It's something very simple, something (almost) everyone understands yet something almost nobody has ever seen. It's a powerful experiment for the general population. But to answer a more general question. We shouldn't stop repeating experiments just because they were done before. The scientific method works as long as we keep reproducing results. Sure, this is a trivial result, but it's something every kid should have done by its own in the school physics lab.