William J. Beaty ("Bill Beaty") is an American research engineer with a long-standing, and highly ranked web page about Amateur Science, in particular Electromagnetism, Electricity and crackpot science and the advantages of not being too skeptical.
His website which was started as early as 1994 is notable for having many science and educational projects, such as magnetic levitation (he invented a maglev system based on spinning copper pipes[1]), Tesla coils, and many practical jokes and demonstrations including melting glass bottles in a microwave. He also invented a technique for drawing hologram-like images by hand.[2]
His amateur investigations also include looking into traffic waves, and working out driving strategies to smooth out the flow.[3]
He also maintains a list of mistakes in K-6 textbooks.[4]