Melphistopheles's Liked Comments
From experimental demonstration gone horribly wrong file:
In my college "Physics for Poets" class, which we always called Physics for Idiots, we were doing an experiment about the propagation of waves, I think. I'm not too sure, as you will see, I've blocked the experience out from my memory as much as I can. The professor had a large section of o-ring gasket, used to seal oil tanks, I believe. This was stretched across the front of the classroom, struck at one end, and we watched the wave propagate back and forth. Now, this classroom was not too big, so it was hard to see the effect that the professor was talking about, so he asked for volunteers to take the gasket out into the hall and duplicate the demonstration, joking how dangerous it was. I jokingly volunteered a friend, and the professor said, okay, so my friend volunteered me right back. We brought the gasket into the hall, stretched it the length of the hall, probably 70 to 100 feet, with two people behind each of us, sort of like a really clueless tug-of-war game. The professor stood at the other end of the hall from my team, and struck the gasket with a ruler. The wave propagated back and forth along the gasket a few times, very impressively, and the next thing I knew I was laying on the ground with a whole bunch of rubber gasket piled up against my guts. The sheer absurdity of the situation, combined with the extreme pain I was in caused me to, when I got my breath back, to laugh very literally hysterically. When the ashen faced professor came up to me, I was able to choke out the words "I'd better get an A for this lab.", which I think I did. I went to the school nurse, who agreed that although it looked really awful to have huge purple bruises, let us say between just above the knees to just below the navel, I did not have any serious internal injuries. The horrifying bruises took about a month to go away completely. Oh, the things I wouldn't do for SCIENCE! Top that!
In my college "Physics for Poets" class, which we always called Physics for Idiots, we were doing an experiment about the propagation of waves, I think. I'm not too sure, as you will see, I've blocked the experience out from my memory as much as I can. The professor had a large section of o-ring gasket, used to seal oil tanks, I believe. This was stretched across the front of the classroom, struck at one end, and we watched the wave propagate back and forth. Now, this classroom was not too big, so it was hard to see the effect that the professor was talking about, so he asked for volunteers to take the gasket out into the hall and duplicate the demonstration, joking how dangerous it was. I jokingly volunteered a friend, and the professor said, okay, so my friend volunteered me right back. We brought the gasket into the hall, stretched it the length of the hall, probably 70 to 100 feet, with two people behind each of us, sort of like a really clueless tug-of-war game. The professor stood at the other end of the hall from my team, and struck the gasket with a ruler. The wave propagated back and forth along the gasket a few times, very impressively, and the next thing I knew I was laying on the ground with a whole bunch of rubber gasket piled up against my guts. The sheer absurdity of the situation, combined with the extreme pain I was in caused me to, when I got my breath back, to laugh very literally hysterically. When the ashen faced professor came up to me, I was able to choke out the words "I'd better get an A for this lab.", which I think I did. I went to the school nurse, who agreed that although it looked really awful to have huge purple bruises, let us say between just above the knees to just below the navel, I did not have any serious internal injuries. The horrifying bruises took about a month to go away completely. Oh, the things I wouldn't do for SCIENCE! Top that!
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