Today I boo-ya’ed my physics teacher, all thanks to our very own Cecil Adams.
My physics teacher is revered as a god by most of his students. People take his word as gospel on all matters, not just those pertaining to physics. He likes to brag about how incredibly intelligent he is, and that’s how he recruits his minions. (I think he’s somewhat of a pompous jackass, but that’s a different story.) My classmates never ever doubt him. Ever.
Today we were talking about the Coriolis effect. One student raised his hand and asked, “Isn’t that what causes the water to flush different ways in different hemispheres?” My teacher said, “Precisely. Blah blah blah…” and proceeded to explain it in further detail. I raised my hand and said, “It’s actually due to the way the toilet was built.” My teacher looked at me and was just about to explain again why the water goes down the toilet in different directions when I asked if I could look up an article on the internet. He let me. I said, “Ever hear of Cecil Adams? Yeah. It’s him,” and gave him a sly look. I searched for about 30 seconds and found Cecil’s column. (As I was searching, some kid scoffed, “The website she’s at is called The Straight Dope!” in a what-a-buffoon type of way. I suppose he had drugs on the mind.)
My teacher read it and said rather sheepishly, “I’ll have to check that experiment.” Later on in the class, though, he told me I did a good job, doubting him. My friends (who were laughing before about how I was going to be completely humiliated by our teacher) said, “You got mad props from the big dog!” I also got a thumbs up and a “Good job!” from a kid who I thought hated me.
Thank you very much, Mr. Adams, for writing your daily column. I was previously looked down upon by my physics teacher, but now I have gained his respect. Whoo-hoo!
You know, almost the same thing happened to me my freshman year of HS. My earth science teacher explained the coriolis effect, and said how that’s why water ALWAYS goes counter-clockwise in the northern hemisphere. I raised my hand and said that he was wrong, my toilet at home flushed clockwise. He said it probably just starts that way, but stops and changes to CCW after I stop looking. Knowing that it went CW the entire time, I kept trying to argue my point, but he never accepted it as true. I almost went so far as to videotape a ‘dry flush,’ so to speak, and play it in front of the class, but I never did. I should go back to him over winter break and show him that article…
Back in my day, when we wanted to use Cecil Adams to refute our physics teacher, we didn’t have these new-fangled com-PEW-ters with IN-ter-net ACK-cess. No sir, we had to walk home, uphill, in the snow, barefoot, enduring the taunts of our classmates all the while. Then we had to painfully transcribe the column, with quill pen, from the broadsheet posted in the middle of the busy intersection down the street. Then we had to walk back to school, also uphill, also barefoot, but in the sleet, only to realize once we got back that the ink we used was water soluble. Kids these days got it easy.
Back in my day, we had oil tankers (they weren’t called oil tankers, since oil hadn’t been invented–you can imagine what they were called) that carried outhouse holes to South America so they could be despun. They’re not like water toilets, after all.
Now that I think about it, they were packed in boxes, nine backyards to a box. Yep, the hole nine yards. Sometimes they’d come back in a bit less than pristine shape, if you know what I mean. They’d make you a little dizzy.
This is a topic even Ed Zotti got partly wrong. Little Ed wrote a book called Know It All!, which is a kind of Straight Dope-lite. Many of the questions are cribbed from Cecil’s old columns – nothing wrong with “stealing from the best”, if you do it right.
However, on pages 86-87, Zotti tackles “Do bathtub drains go counterclockwise in the Northern Hemisphere and clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere?” Most of the answer is correct, but it also includes the following:
Hurricanes is correct, but tornadoes is not – although they tend to rotate in the same direction as hurricanes, they can and sometimes do rotate in the opposite direction. My theory is that Zotti added the tornado statement, which does not appear in Cecil’s original column, in a vain attempt to “one up” The Master. Obviously, not a good idea in this case…
Also, according to this thread from long ago, the preferred form of a compliment for Uncle Cecil is: “Nice job, O awesome one.”
As someone who’s tried to fight ignorance in person, it is exceptionally hard when you don’t have a computer or the appropriate book handy to back you up. Great way to stand up for yourself and the truth.
There is nothing… nothing… more satisfying than proving a teacher wrong, especially when that teacher is a pompous jackass, and especially when that teacher is a man. In the language of your post, I think I’m supposed to give you “props” or something.
I think the most important thing to realize is that anyone can be wrong. Even the Greatest Ones. But the frequency with which high school teachers can be wrong… well, just keep it in mind. Pretty spooky! -Jenny
8th grade. Math teacher asks who believes that hot water can freeze faster than colder water. I’m the only one who raises my hand. I had read the Cecil column about the Mpemba Effect. My math teacher scoffed at this “foolish” notion, and attempted to refute me based on mathematics. I was going to bring in the column, but I didn’t; I didn’t want to provoke his anger by publicly correcting him.
Fast-forward to my sophomore year in high school. My eighth grade math teacher is substituting for our normal teacher, who is sick. As if impelled by some cosmic force, perhaps…destiny…he brings the topic up again. He asks if anyone thinks hot water can freeze faster than cold water. I raise my hand, and immediately blurt out an explanation of the Mpemba effect, citing the relevant factors and scientific research. Everyone looks at me for a few seconds in silence, including the teacher. I had been pretty enthusiastic, you see, and the explanation had come out of nowhere.
The teacher sort of grunted and said something like, “Interesting,” and said he’d look into it. I offered to find him the Cecil article, and did so. He, and my whole class, became less ignorant thanks to Mr. Adams.
By the way, none of this should imply that my eigth grade math teacher was somehow a bad person. He actually happened to be the best math teacher I have ever had. He just had a little patch of ignorance that was clamoring for elimination.
Yeah, me neither, at least not in school. But my physics teacher did have at least one Straight Dope book in the rather extensive collection he had in the classroom.
