Fun_People Archive
1 Nov
Fun Demonstrations for the First Day of Lab Class

Date: Wed, 1 Nov 95 23:16:14 -0800
From: Peter Langston <psl>
To: Fun_People
Subject: Fun Demonstrations for the First Day of Lab Class

From: Daniel Steinberg <dss@opcode.com>
Re: 50 Fun Things for Professors to Do on the First Day of Class

Reminds me of a story i heard about a lecturer in a Chemistry lab class.
(Stop me if you've heard this.)
Seems he wanted to impress on his students the importance of being alert
and careful when working with dangerous substances.  Before class, he had
put on rubber gloves and, in place of his middle finger, had inserted a
piece of a frankfurter.  As he began lecturing on safety, he removed the
lid from a cannister of liquid nitrogen and casually rested his hand on the
top edge, letting his middle finger droop into the can.  Students all over
the room could see this, but either figured he knew what he was doing or
were too flustered to say anything.  Finally, as he was making his point
about alertness and diligence, he raised his hands high in the air and
brought them *smack!* down on the table.  Naturally, his middle 'finger'
shattered into a million pieces.  Well, he got his point across, anyway.

[Reminds me of a story I heard about a lecturer in a Biology lab class.
(Stop me if you've heard this.)
Seems he also wanted to impress on his students the importance of being alert
and careful.  He cautioned the class to pay close attention as he dipped his  
finger into a beaker of clear yellow fluid that he described as horse urine,  
put his finger in his mouth, and confirmed that, indeed, it tasted like horse  
urine.  Apparently no one in the class noticed that he dipped his index but  
tasted his middle finger, so when he asked some poor student in the front row  
to come up and reproduce his results...
-psl]

© 1995 Peter Langston