Stupid things you/your teachers have done..

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

This was inspired by the “Unusual things your teachers showed you” thread. It made me recall this story.

I had a great physics professor my freshman year of college. He was one of those really eccentric guys who didn’t believe in tests, textbooks, or safety. He did, however, believe in hands-on work and blowing stuff up. We spent most of the class blowing things up and doing the math on where objects would land(assuming a small, controlled explosion). The math never seemed to work out, but we had fun nonetheless. Anyway, we did a lot in that class, but my favorite was the final thing he ever did in that school(this is one of the reasons he was let go).

First, let me describe the room. It was a standard lecture hall that curved like a large semi-circle, except closer to like 120 degrees or so, with glass windows running all around the top. Along the left and right walls were long countertops where groups could go down a bit at a time and do experiments. On these counters were sinks, test tubes, microscopes, those premade slide thingies, etc. God knows how much all of that stuff costed. We, of course, were in stadium-like seating.

Anyway, he decided we were going to make potato guns, except design them for tennis balls. He had been reprimanded the year before for making potato guns and had promised he wouldn’t do it again. We got into teams and supplied our own tape, pvc, etc. We built them all on Tuesday, left class early, and eagerly awaited Thursday morning(we would have loved this class to be a 3-day). Thursday came and brought with it a huge thunderstorm. There was no way in hell any of us were going outside. It was ultimately decided that being outside wasn’t that important. The only problem we could see(we weren’t thinking real clearly) was the curvature of the back wall would cause the ball to bounce in odd directions. But, genius mode kicked in, and we realized the windows were flat. As long as we aimed at them, we knew where the balls were going. We got in a line and the first group shot their ball at the window. It smacked off perfectly, hit the ceiling, and then flew over there heads, bouncing off the back wall and ending up under the professor’s desk. That went on for a couple tries, then we started getting brave. Different angles at different windows and the like. I decided to aim back at the middle window(I was getting a little scared at this point). I squeezed a little too much lighter fluid in the back and set it off. The window shattered with a bang I will never forget. We just stood there stunned, trying to figure out why it kept breaking. As it turned out, just about the time I had shattered that window, somebody had missed a window completely. The ball had hit the back wall, ricocheted up off the ceiling, then came back down through some test tubes and threw a microsocope over. From there, we’re not sure exactly what hit what, but ultimately everything on the left side counter was destroyed.

We had about 3 weeks left of school at this point, and were worried we were going to get in trouble. None of us ever heard anything else about it from the school. But, when we came back the next Tuesday, the window was replaced, both countertops were cleared, and a TA had taken over the class. Yep, Dr. Ziegler was gone.

Anybody else have a teacher do, or encourage you to do, something stupid? I’m guessing a lot of physics class related replies will be showing up. :slight_smile: Always my favorite subject.

2

No, I haven’t been encouraged to do anything stupid.

In my physics class, we were to come up with ways of using our physics formulas. Apparently, in the past, students had been dropping full pop cans from the third floor onto the sidewalks, and even the daycare playground below. Our teacher begged us not to come up with anything that would get him fired.

3

Hmmm… one of my english teachers had sex with all the males in the senior class for a few years running.

Then she got married.

–Tim

4

This doesn’t fall into the category of destructively stupid, just run-of-the-mill stupidity. One of my English teachers in High School was a full-blown moron, and stubborn as a mule. One day we arrived for class to see a TV and VCR from the AV department; “oh good, we get to watch a movie and don’t have to listen to his inane yammering today.” Well, he goes to put the tape in and nothing happens, then he tries to eject it and it won’t. He messes with the TV, he pushes every button on the VCR, he changes channels, etc etc. He REFUSES to let any of us help him with the VCR. He wastes nearly a half hour futzing around. Finally he sends one of the students down to the AV department to get the teacher in charge. He takes one look at the VCR, holds up the cord and says “Helps if you plug it in.” Estupido!

5

An english teacher at my school spent the Thursday and Friday following the Survivor finale playing the tape of it. Waste of time? I think so.

6

I remember I had a science teacher who used to juggle with small pots of mercury. He didn’t last too long.

7

Homer said:

  1. Damn, I had the wrong school!
  2. Come to think of it, none of my English teachers would inspire me to have sex with them.
  3. Actually, my senior year teacher was a guy. Definitely no thanks.

Sadly, our physics class never had anything quite so fun occur. One chemistry class did, however, make home made icecream. Yum!

Closest to disaster in class was a ninth grade physical science class. We had test tubes and were making some sort of chemical reaction by heating. Then there was some question about what happens if you heat some more or something. The gist of it is that it gives off gas, but somehow I figured that we had to test to see. Of course I put a stopper in the top of my test tube. I start to light up and at that point my teacher says, “WHAT do you think you’re doing?!” Um, the experiment? No?

Then later I was cleaning the test tube, and trying to get the stopper out. It was wet from dumping in water, and as I pulled on the stopper, suddenly my grip slipped and I watched the test tube fly several feet across the room and careen off the concrete floor. Fortunately it didn’t break or crack. I was amazed - it was completely intact.

8

I had a social studies teacher in high school who was teaching us anthropology. On an overhead, he had written about rites but wrote them “rights.” Some of us snickered and someone made a comment, and he got PISSED. It wasn’t a typo, he really didn’t know the difference. He was really defensive and tried to get us in trouble. I thought that was the height of stupidity, not spelling that correctly–I mean, it was an important word in his own field of interest!! It was also disillusioning for me–it was the first time I realized I was really and truly smarter than a teacher. My mom was a teacher and I’d grown up thinking they were some of the smartest, hardest-working people around. I was lucky in that most of them were–but not this moron.

Granted, we were immature to snicker, but hey, he was the grownup. He shoulda been gracious about it.

9

In my freshman Earth Science class, the teacher:
[ul]
[li]Used cigarette smoke to show that heat rises, and ran out of cigarettes in 6 classes.[/li][li]Fell alseep during my presentation on the planet Uranus[/li][li]Was often corrected for leaving out important facts. He really was a moron. Example: I wrote ‘I hate Earth Science’ on the cover sheet of my homework three times before he noticed.[/ul][/li]P.S. This is the only time that I have had such problems with a teacher.

Sophomore year, Biology:

I’m sure I could remember a lot more, but one thing overshadowed everything else. What was that you say? He was arrested for:[ul]
[li]Distribution of a controlled substance. (I believe it was marijuana and cocaine)[/li][li]Sexual harassment.[/li][li]Sexual penetration with a controlled substance.[/ul][/li]
Senior year, Chemistry:
[ul]
[li]Told us what kinds of beers are good.[/li][li]Played hackeysack with us on a regular basis.[/li][li]When making carbon from sugar and sulfuric acid, he was unaware that the fume hood blew into the room, not out the window as intended. Nothing like a room full of acid fumes to ruin a good day at school.[/li][li]When he left, a friend and myself changed the expiriments a little. It called for a test tube full of hydrogen gas, and a match, resulting in a small pop. I took a flask that must have been a quart in volume. That was fun![/ul][/li]
College freshman Chemistry again.

The lab instructor had good vision in only one eye, therefore, no depth perception. One day, while trying to line up a beaker of nitric acid with a buret, he nearly dumped the acid on his hand.

10

There was a teacher at my school that lived in my neighborhood who for some reason, claimed I terrorized and raped little boys in the neighborhood and she told that to all the teachers at school. I was with some friends once and some little kids called them Ni****s(gotta be PC) so we basicially said that they should watch it cuz we were about 8 years older much bigger and were pissed off anyway. We went to the kids house to tell their parents that they had biggot kids and friends. So she(teacher) called the cops saying we were trying to break in and loot their house, and we got in trouble(had no intention of any thing illegal), the kids mom drives up and we talk to her after we talk to the cops, she says her kids have done it before…

A week later, the teacher said we tried to rape her daughters(probably 1 and 2) which we didn’t, she tried to get a restraining order against me and a friend.

She said we egged her house and she saw us, and it was clear as day, my friend was in Chicago(7 hrs away) I was in Wyoming, My friend was at his fathers house just so we could catch her lying. Then she changed her story to another day(we were still gone) the cops told her to stop lying.

Then her husband came over and said I was a no good druggie and dealer, he said that about all my frieds to my parents who kicked them out.

Then her husband was yelling at us (racial stuff) and he called the cops and said we called him a f***ing faggot. and threw rocks at him.

Then on the last day of school she was convinced that some kids(probably us, who knows) were coming to beat her up so she barracadded her classroom door and windows with desks. They had to call a police negotiatior to get her out. She got fired too.

She had to spend some time at a mental hospital and now the cops won’t respond to any calls they get from her…

and we did nothing to deserve this. Later she was the short end of many a joke.

11

There was an experiment in chemistry given to us on a xerox. We were to complete the blanks at the end of the page after doing the exercise.

You took a test tube, filled it partially with a moderately strong HCl and then filled it the rest of the way with water. You then took a one hole stopper and put a wire through it and put some magnesium strip aroung the end of the wire. You then capped the tube with the stopper and while holding your thumb over the hole so the contents did not pour out and the wire did not fall out and slowly tip it over so that the strong hcl comes in contact with the magnesium. You were then to record the results without looking directly at it to avoid eye damage.

Think about all that. We were trying to do this quickly because he had wasted a lot of class goofing off with sodium in hot water IIRC.

Think about the number of things wrong with this picture.

About halfway over i realize that fairly strong acid is heading toward my poor little thumb. I get my thumb clear and the acid pours free igniting the metal and then splashes on to my legs. I had lots of holes (but no runs, it looked freaky) in my pantyhose but no burns on my legs.

12

One of my high school English teachers claimed to have run over her neighbour’s dog with a lawnmower. Two years after that, she was arrested for DUI and never heard from again.

[slight hijack]
Since some of you are posting about stupid things done in chemistry lab, I thought I’d post this one even though it wasn’t done by a teacher. Before my senior year, after major rebuilding work on our school, the chemistry lab was completely rebuilt. In the process of doing so, the water taps were redesigned to look exactly like the old gas taps (for the bunsen burners).

First day in the lab, another student plugged his bunsen burner into the tap and turned it to full blast. The water actually hit the ceiling!
[/slight hijack]

13

example of a local teacher:

I was in a deep philosophical conversation with my brother and a friend of his who is a teacher (OK, we were in a bar eating chicken wings on the way to the fights)

Something came on the TV that mentioned France. Someone made a remark about how the French have been getting their butts kicked in war for wuite a while, always needing the US and Britain to bail them out. Well, we tried to figure if they had won much since Waterloo. I brought up the Crimean war.

LNM (tech type): Hey, what about the Crimean War?

LMNB (non-college graduate): I think they were in that, did they win?

J (Junior high teacher): I dunno.

LNM: J, they were in it, right?

J: I dunno

LNM: J, what do you teach?

J: Social studies.

He’s a history teacher and he doesn’t know if they were in the war! A physics teacher gets a pass, but this is his field…

14

I’ve hooked a bunsen burner up to the tap before. Not only could it hit the ceiling, it could shoot thirty feet out of the open door and wet the side of my teachers truck. I sat right next to the sink with a high-pressure nozzle, so my friend and I did a lot of stuff like this. We made a great water gun out of the glass part of an eyedropper and a water-filled rubber tube. We also discovered that if you capped an empty test tube with a one hole stopper and jammed the sink’s high-pressure nozzle into the stopper hole you could make a fun little projectile. We would turn the water on just a little, so it dripped into the tube slowly. It would just sit there and look like it wasn’t going to do anything, but when the pressure built up enough, the tube would blast down into the sink, usually shattering. All this was done in the same room where the Biology teacher often had his classes put a little water in a test tube, jam a stopper in it, and hold it at an angle over a bunsen burner until the stopper exploded out of the tube. He also told us that one of his students had made mustard gas by mixing chemicals in the wrong proportions.

15

2 things:

  1. Chemistry teacher - first ever chemistry class - sttod there for the whole lesson with an open bottle of bromine in his hand & brown fumes rising out of it. Waffling about solid, liquid, gas, sublimation. Whilst poisoning half the class - everyone was coughing by the end & two people had gone out to be sick, one in the corridor in front of the door. He still had no idea it was to do with him.

  2. Same teacher (complete moron & we won’t even go into his dress sense - other than to say he had none) thought he was brilliant with a video camera. This is early - mid 80s, England, so not as common as they are today. So he thought it would be a good idea if he videod experiments so he didn’t have to do them again. So sodium, potassium, lithium - group 1 metal reactions with water.
    He sets up a huge water trough, puts a glass screen in front of it for safety, faffs around with the camera for ages, does his talking and smiling for the camera routine, so doesn’t pay attention to what he’s doing. He puts a huge lump of pottassium into the water, it shoots to the front, burning, sticks to the glass there, & cracks it from the heat. Water pours out everywhere & he just stands spluttering (& none of us thought of nicking the tape to keep!!!)