[rec.arts.sf.written] Re: Dumb things teachers told me (was Re: Willie Wonka)
Danny Sichel
From: m...@web1.calweb.com (Mike Van Pelt)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
In article <MPG.1d2d1afbe...@netnews.mchsi.com>,
Robert Hutchinson <ser...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>I had a very bad habit of correcting my teachers, especially my math
>teachers, far too quickly and eagerly. No "excuse me, but is that
>supposed to be a 6?" Rather "it would be 12 but it's actually 24
>becauseyouforgottomultiplybytwo".
My very favorite correcting-the-teacher's-math story was one,
alas, where I wasn't in that class, I just heard the marvelous
tale later. It was a college physics class on energy storage
in capacitors. The professor had a bank of capacitors of a
particular capacity he'd charged up to a particular voltage,
and, prior to discharging them to get a nice bang, he did the
math on the blackboard to show how much energy was about to be
released.
Voice from the back of the room: "Uh, Dr. Miagawa, I think
you slipped the decimal point there." (I suppose I'm showing
my age by saying this was in the age of slide rules.)
Dr. Miagawa stopped, looked at the calculations on the board,
said "Oh, dear..." while looking in horror out of the corner
of his eye at the Capacitors-O'Death on his desk.
He got the first several rows of the auditorium to move back,
took the screwdriver he was going to use to discharge the
caps and taped it to a meter stick, then taped that meter
stick to another meter stick.
*FLASH*WHAM!!*
Vaporized the screwdriver.
(I have my suspicions that Dr. Miagawa knew exactly what he
was doing, and had one student primed to "correct his math"
if no one else caught it, but it's still great theater.)
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