My torts professor is quite a character, although it’s tough to describe why. One funny thing she did was talk about some friends of hers, the Foote family, who were having a baby girl. Despite naming her Emily, my professor referred to her exclusively as “little Learned.” Also, when we studied the famous case of Palsgraf v. Long Island R.R. Co., she led us in a “Palsgraf! Palsgraf! Palsgraf!” cheer.
Well, if you’re a lawyer they’re funny.
–Cliffy
I had a chem professor who was one of those crusty old people that had been completely dried up by a lifetime in academia teaching chemistry. He used to demonstrate reactions by building molecules out of rods and foam balls and showing how they interact. Well, one day he was teaching us some particularly complicated reaction, and he said, “I’d like to show you how this works, but I don’t have enough balls.” When the class started sniggering, he glared at us, but clearly didn’t understand what we were sniggering about.
Freshman Chem lab, another professor is there working on something, and the whole class whirls around as some student, attempting to pick up a very hot beaker with her hands, screams and drops it on the floor.
Professor, without missing a beat: “The most important thing you learn in Frosh Chem is that there’s no way to tell the difference between hot glass and cold glass by looking.”
Well, this story is probably apochryphal, but what the heck.
A graduate student is taking his oral exams in front of a couple of the professors. On of the professors asks something along th lines, “Please do a Taylor expansion of n variable…” The student thinks for a second and finally replies, “I don’t know that but if I ever need to now it I can just look it up.” To which the professor replied, “That’s not quite right, you need to know it now.”
Wow, and I thought I had good stories. Well, some of what I’m about to relate is fairly good, but nothing like some of the stuff so far. Us Dopers just attract fun, eh? 
Anyway, my first semester at RPI I took a course called Introduction to Methods of Theoretical Physics, with a professor with whom I’ve taken two other classes, and for whom I still do research. He is the absentminded professor, and I’ve never seen anyone work so many jokes into a physics lecture.
Some memorable quotes that I jotted down in my notebook:
“Oh. There’s a class here.”
(After several minutes of mixed up integrals) “There, aren’t I supposed to be proving that?”
(Discussing a math utility program) “I wasted at least half an hour over the fact that you gotta capitalize Pi.”
“I don’t like doing integrals. That’s why I make you do them.”
“Don’t do it now, it’ll prove me wrong.”
“Some of it will be nonsense, and some of it will be stuff I don’t teach.”
“So I’m going to ignore the 1/r for a minute … pause … forever.”
“This 4π is actually infinite. adds ~ to = sign”
Class: general well-if-you-say-so assent
“Well, you bought it!”
“It’s a rigid string.”
For some time he emphasized that the divergence of the radial vector is 3 (in cartesian coordinates). Over and over he told us we had to know that fact, and that it would be worth 50 points on the test. It was. Out of 820. And then there was the test we had on Talk Like A Pirate Day. Every problem related to pirates in some way while still being an actual physics problem. It was glorious.
He also illustrated certain optical polarizations by doing the trademark dances from Saturday Night Fever and Pulp Fiction.
The absolute kicker though was one day when he was discussing probability distributions. It hadn’t taken long for me to become one of the most vocal and noticed students in the course (I’m just friendly like that 
), and so his example was, “Suppose I create a pit, and I throw Spatial Rift 47 in it.” Then he went on to describe, for 10 minutes, the distribution of my possible positions, as well as the probability that a rock he dropped from above would hit the top of my head.
Now here are two from Experimental Physics, same professor.
"Anytime you hook up a device, the inductor says, ‘Wooo … the current is changing!’ "
“I can see just fine. throws marker at garbage can, misses completely”
Now, I’m taking Quantum Physics with this guy, and I should emphasize again that in addition to all the funny stuff, he is an excellent teacher. Although, when teaching Physics for Archies (not actually called that, but that’s what it is), he instituted a practice in that course where if he had something off-topic to say he would go stand in a prearranged spot. He tried that in Quantum Physics, but it was quickly forgotten. Anyway, the few noteworthy things in Quantum Physics:
“So what we do is we look for points where the left side of the equation is equal to the right side.”
This was a legitimate comment, given the context, but I couldn’t help myself.
Me: “NO. WAY.” Laughter ensues.
Now, the last anecdote from this professor. He uses two overheads (such that their projections almost overlap) in QPhys, to be able to refer back to things; it’s easier for the students to follow his train of thought. One day he was indicating a substitution or something, but between two equations on opposite overheads. He drew a line starting on one overhead, and continued it on the other to the proper equation.
And then there’s my sociology professor. It is impossible to characterize this man in a single post, or indeed in any written form. You simply have to meet him to believe him. He is a 60something Brooklynite, and the things this man knows I’ll never understand whence he gets it all. He gets away with murder. A few weeks ago he went to a magic society conference in Las Vegas, and brought back pictures of himself being rather friendly with Supergirl. On the day we watched a video about a Peruvian healer who, at one point, used a ceremonial rattle, this professor brought in his own rattle and proceeded to use it for some time. Not a class session goes by when he himself does not wonder how he gets away with saying some of the things he says.
If that’s the same prof. it was a few years ago, I had him. Well, for a day, then I had to drop sociology because I needed another class that was only offered at that time. But yeah, even from just one class I got a good impression of him.
My advisor as an undergraduate was a Korean professor (he was Korean, my major was Political Science) who was very, very bright, but had a weakness for Scotch. He liked to have a drink or ten before class, and as a result his already impenetrable accent got thicker and he could have been speaking Urdu for all we could understand him.
We were talking about Claire Booth Luce for some reason, and he was trying to impress upon us how outspoken she was. It came out “Crair Lu Bu BERRY bocal woman.” To a person, we all turned to the person sitting next to us and said, “What the fuck did he say?” He could tell that we couldn’t understand him, so like anyone he thought that if he said it louder it would make more sense.
Imagine if you will a drunken Korean, in a poorly made suit about 4 sizes too big for him, with glasses that looked like the proverbial Coke bottles, screaming "CRAIR LU BU BERRY BOCAL WOMAN! He ended up writing on the blackboard and saying “Damn I want go home.”
We understood that perfectly.
When I was at community college, one of my professors was a guy who looked like Jerry Garcia and used to swear regularly in class. He was hysterical. He’d joke around, and his big schtick was that he always told us, “Why am I here? FOR THE MONEY!”
But he expected a hell of a lot of work out of us. Some of the more serious students didn’t like him because he was so laid back. They thought it was somehow “disrespectful.”
His favorite trick though, was when he had a student complaint. He’d be very polite and say, “Well, you know, you’ll have to go and visit the department head.”
So the student would go up to the faculty offices, and guess who was just happened to be head of the English department? Heh.
I didn’t think I had anything to add to this thread, then I remembered when I studied network engineering.
We were discussing network printers, and people were debating the merits of network/local printers. The lecturer, who was Israeli, suggested that the network printer was necessary, especially if you wanted to take a dump.
Meaning a data dump. Obviously.
The saddest thing was only myself and one other guy were immature enough to find it amusing.
Well, if I may be permitted to do a reply from the opposite side of the fence:
My first Database Processing and Theory class. At one point during the course, I was writing/explaining, writing/explaining on the whiteboard, I was ON A ROLL!
Wrote lower, and lower, and lower. As I came to the bottom of the whiteboard, I heard a sound I’d never heard before…shiikkkk!
My pants split!
I wuz cool about it as the class cracked up. Put my hand over the split in my ass and said,“OK, 5 minutes to go, we’ll make it up Thursday. Dismissed!”
Kinda defused things for me through my next 6 years of teaching.
I had a prof talking about drilling rigs say:
“And remember, one Aw Shit! wipes out 100 'at a boys.”
My favourite was a quote from my very funny Evolution teacher, on the evolution of the biomechanics of running. “All four-legged mammals will gallop. Even a platypus will gallop. [pause] If you kick it.”
Must be something about Torts. I had the (in)famous Prof. David Rosenberg. There’s a whole list of stuff he said during my year posted elsewhere. A few gems:
Film production professor. His classes were, by necessity, rather casual. We were all (25 or so students) sitting around the sound stage discussing a film idea from one of the students. The discussion was about having a sex scene, and the best way to film it, how to make your actors comfortable, set security, etc.
The discussion got fairly graphic (positions, etc) and a few students got a little bawdy. The class devolved into giggles and the prof, laughing himself, said “Now now now. We’re all adult filmmakers here!”. The class paused, then burst into laughter. I and three of his closest students got him a tshirt at the end of the year that proudly proclaimed “adult filmmaker” on the back. (I still wear mine)
He had many a slip of the tongue like that. Great guy.
I had an English Prof that had a fondness for drink, Barry White’s voice and Albert Einstein’s willful hairstyle. He had us all do a writing sample on the first day. We didn’t get them back for three or four months. He apologized for the delay, but he had spilled PBR on them and had them hung all over his kitchen to dry.
He was great fun.
Prof speaking:
I only get really sarcastic towards the end of the semester when I’m beat and have no more patience left. Some years ago, a student came in a bit late and didn’t realize that the class was working on whatever had been assigned and was in the syllabus as well. She asked, “Are we going to do anything today?”
I replied, “No, [student’s name], we all come here to [name of college] to do sit and do absolutely nothing.”
My colleague S. sometimes finds students doodling instead of concentrating on the English or lit. lesson for the day. He walks over to them, looks at the drawing, asks them, "Are you an art major?" And when they say "no," he says, "Good!"
I realize these are pretty mild compared to most of the ones already posted.....I am enjoying them.:smack: That should have read “to sit and do absolutely nothing.”
:rolleyes:
Mine comes from Calc II. Earlier in the semester we had a test over a section that the class absolutely bombed. 30% set the curve, and you’d pass with a ‘D’ with 17% (I was closer to 17% than 30%).
Anyway, at the review for the final, we get to that section of book. There’s a few nervous mutterings, then the Professor announces, “I’m not going to have anything from this section on the test.”
Big sighs of relief from the class, then he continues, “No, the purpose of the final is for you to show me what you know, and you’ve already proven to me that you DON’T know this.”
This one isn’t really that good but what the hell. It’s not really the prof either.
I was taking a freshman composition at the community college. We were supposed to keep a notebook with all our work and it was supposed to be decorated in some way. (I thought that, the newspaper scavenger hunt and some other things were a little too much like high school). One flirtatious young woman put a picture of herself in a bikini on the back. At one point the middle-aged male prof was collecting it and said “Is that you?” and she said yes and he said “woah” or some such and people giggled a bit.
At some point he told her he needed to see the body of her term paper and she said “Remind me to give you my body after class.” The class went silent for a moment. He asked her, “Would you care to rephrase that?” and everyone cracked up. He went on to speak for a minute or two about working in schools and correcting parole officers who spoke of “violating” students.
A couple from my first year of university, same course but different professors.
Nice way to help the students look forward to the year 
A lecture on the Presocratics. He’s been talking about the laws of nature, and how you can’t make something from nothing. “However, it appears you can create nothing from something because I’ve lost my chalk.”
Last lecture of the Medieval section. The professor has spent two hours talking about the difference between Protestant beliefs and Catholic, the former having been talked about quite a bit by Prof. Klump* earlier in the semester**. She wraps up her lecture like this. “Well, Klump has said that you just need faith, but I’m teaching the last lecture so I get to have the final word.”
*Not his real name
**I think. I’ve never had such a hard time concentrating as when this guy talks, short of being badly sleep deprived. I might as well have not attended lectures at all.
Did he do the Santa Claus thing, and/or GLI and ILG?