Homage to Psycho Physics Teachers (1021 hits)
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Submitted by Nicole <nakita963.at.yahoo.com> (View user info) at 2004-10-18 12:57:54 EDT
We have all had crazy professors. For some reason I think the field of Physics seems to attract a disproportionate number of slightly off-their-rocker types as well as outright wackos.
My high school physics teacher was one of those slightly crazy types. He was very much into teaching physics principles through real world experiences and experiments. It just so happened that all of the real world experiences he put us through entailed a healthy chance of death or dismemberment.
Mr. Olson was a young man of maybe 30 years but he always rode a bike to work which was very unusual given the suburban location of my school. I soon found out the reason for his bike riding habit was not for health but due to a series of DUI convictions which caused him to lose his license. He was a friendly teacher who never hesitated to write late passes for his students if they wanted to hang out and talk or just play around in his lab. I thought of him only as a friendly and slightly eccentric man with a drinking problem at least until our first "lab" experience.
We were learning about velocity and acceleration when he brought out a triangle shaped piece of hard plastic with long pieces of string attached to each corner. He proceeded to swing the triangle around and around in large circles explaining acceleration. I wondered why a triangle. Wouldn't a ball be easier? Then I learned the name of his apparatus "The Flying Triangle of Death". Why "Flying"? Because he then proceeded to let go of the strings and the triangle hurtled through the air and struck the classroom door with a loud CRACK. He demonstrated the Triangle's abilities a few more times striking various objects in the room before the end of the class period. It was at this point that I realized Mr. Olson may be more than just an eccentric and friendly alcoholic. This was going to be fun.
Soon thereafter the class was introduced to The Merry-Go-Round of Death. As you can probably guess this one was a demonstration of centripetal and centrifugal force. A large board approximately 10 ft long was centered and clamped to one of those metal stools that you can twist around on. Two small boards were then clamped to the ends of the long board to form backrests. The classroom was cleared of all desks and two people sat at the ends of the Merry-Go-Round while their classmates spun them around the center stool as fast as they could. Oh Yeah! What fun (yes that is sarcasm). You feel the same force on your body as you do when you turn your car quickly or ride a roller coaster. It wasn't so exciting or deadly until we received a lesson in unbalanced weights and fulcrums.
One particularly large guy was placed on one end of the apparatus and a fairly small girl on the other. I think Mr. Olson knew what was to come and chose those two particular students to liven things up. Everything was going fine, classmates hurtling through the air, until the backrest of the guy came off. He immediately fell to the ground taking the merry-go-round with him, flinging the girl up in the air. He became the new fulcrum and the girl was spun around and into a couple chairs and a countertop. Luckily there was only a small amount of bruising and blood and nothing was reported to the administration. Hell no we weren't going to get Mr. Olson in trouble. This was too damn entertaining.
Next we leaned about trajectories and other things having to do with flying objects. You can imagine our joy at learning that an ongoing project would be to build potato guns and improve upon them throughout the year adding things like baffles, electric ignition, etc. We spent many class periods working and testing our guns, experimenting with various fuel sources, lighter fluid, hairspray, etc. We were allowed to test them in the classroom using both raw potatoes and liquid nitrogen frozen tomatoes. There is nothing quite like shooting a computer screen with a frozen tomato and splattering red chunks across the room. Eventually we did hold a competition outdoors with our guns to see who could shoot the furthest but I think it was all just an excuse to explode things.
It was at this point that the experiments and projects basically lost most of their educational value. Mr. Olson was still on an explosion and destruction so he attempted to teach us something about physics by using a high pressure BB gun to shoot the vacuum tubes within an old television. I still can't figure out what lesson he was trying to teach with that one.
The same goes for his "Flaming Bed of Nails" in which someone would lie down on a bed of nails Mr. Olson spent an entire Saturday making just for this "lab". After the person was situated on the bed of nails cinderblock were place on their stomach. Lighter fluid, of which there was a limitless supply in the classroom, was then squirted onto the cinderblocks and lit on fire. The experiment climaxed with someone using a sledgehammer to break through all of the cinder blocks while a couple other students were stationed nearby to ensure that the person on the bed did not catch fire when the flaming pieces of cinderblock tumbled to the floor. The cinderblock remains where then piled on the next person attempting to master the Flaming Bed of Nails. The object was to see how high of a cinderblock stack could be shattered but one had to be careful for if you didn't break through the entire stack, the person underneath tended to experience a decent amount of pain. When Mr. Olson got a little singed he just laughed and asked who was next.
I had been avoiding the obvious for many months but it was after this that I realized that anyone willing to risk injuring not only himself but students and get away with it had to be completely insane or at least a teenage boy stuck in the body of a Physics teacher.
Knowing the state of mind of Mr. Olson I shouldn't have been surprised at one of the last experiments of the year. By this point we were learning about electricity and magnetism so it was only natural that Mr. Olson set up a demonstration of electric current involving an electric current passed through a ring of students holding hands while standing on plastic buckets. Of course he warned everyone to not step off the bucket, thereby grounding the system, but I think the wonder of watching people's hair stand on end got a little boring for one of the guys. He decided to step off his bucket and caused everyone in the chain a decent amount of pain and actually burned one of the girl's hands.
I went back to visit my high school a few years ago and stopped in to visit Mr. Olson. He was still teaching Physics still as crazy as ever and still using his Flaming Bed of Nails. Mr. Olson created an excitement in learning that few teachers are able to do. Many achieve it with personality or by creating good discussion within the class. Mr. Olson did it with lighter fluid.
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=817&u=/ap/20041014/ap_on_fe_st/professor_removed_3&printer=1
User Reviews
Submitted by Jo_of_the_golden_P (user info) at 2004-11-26 23:33:03 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by JMG114 (user info) at 2004-10-18 18:13:15 (#)
Ranking: 2
My high school physics teacher was a wet-behind-the-ears, uininteresting tool.
That was of course until he gave us the answers to the physics AP the morning before the exam. At that moment, he became my favorite teacher of all.
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I had a math teacher in high school who did that. She would do crazy crap all the time, like stand up in the middle of an exam while we were all quiet and screech "YOU ARE ALL STUPID CHILDREN AND YOU WILL ALL FAIL!"
We found out later on that she had a brain tumour. True story. Her name was Dr. Buhariwala.
Submitted by JonnyX (user info) at 2004-11-11 15:48:34 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by William_Q_Percy (user info) at 2004-10-25 11:47:54 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
hhahhaha!
Submitted by JMG114 (user info) at 2004-10-18 18:13:15 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
My high school physics teacher was a wet-behind-the-ears, uininteresting tool.
That was of course until he gave us the answers to the physics AP the morning before the exam. At that moment, he became my favorite teacher of all.
Submitted by StonedSilly (user info) at 2004-10-18 17:11:54 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
It reminds me of Mr. Keefe, my seventh grade Math Teacher.
He dressed like Stephen Segall, let us listen to music and watch movies all day of every class, let two kids bring in porn every day, smoked a blunt in the room, and locked us in the room when we built a bunch of makeshift book tables and rails for us to grind on. Oh, man, he was cool.
Submitted by JohnGalt (user info) at 2004-10-18 16:47:43 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
This dude sounds even nuttier than my High School physics teacher. But mine wasn't an alcoholic, just an idiot. And he was in a "rock" band that did remakes of classic rock songs with religious lyrics. I swear they did a version of ZZ Top's "Tush" where they sang "Lord take me downtown. I'm just lookin' for your touch."
Submitted by MyNameIsTim (user info) at 2004-10-18 16:17:39 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by DonkeyOnTheEdge (user info) at 2004-10-18 16:13:26 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Nicole,
Ohhhhhhhhh. Gotcha. I've been thinking way too much lately. Carry on.
Submitted by polyamorousaj (user info) at 2004-10-18 16:02:42 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Haha.
My physics teacher had a great experiment.
Say you have a truck/trailer combo going down the road at 70 mph.
There's a car coming behind at 73 mph.
How fast will the car be going once it hits the ramp, 3 mph, 73 mph, or another speed?
Well, it sure as hell wasn't 3 mph.
That was the worst funeral ever.
Submitted by Nicole3 (user info) at 2004-10-18 15:41:25 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Donkey, I meant teachers, not professors. This guy was a HS teacher.
Submitted by DonkeyOnTheEdge (user info) at 2004-10-18 15:21:26 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
We have all had crazy professors.
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Way to alienate me on the first line. Sadly, as cool as I am, I've never attended college. But kudos for letting me know I made the right choice.
Submitted by MaximusPadus (user info) at 2004-10-18 14:25:08 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
My physics teacher was weird as fuck! He used pliers, and ptu them on the overhead projector, and made them look like dinosaurs and stuff
Submitted by thaumaturge (user info) at 2004-10-18 14:14:33 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Reminds me of a particular episode of Family Guy, that wound up with the Prof dropping endangered bird eggs off the school roof ...! Nice!
Submitted by Loren1 (user info) at 2004-10-18 13:49:46 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Hahahah!
Reminds me of my Chemistry Teacher. He wasn't as dangerous, but I LOVED him to death.
He's one of the reasons I grew to be so attracted to older men.
Submitted by Kamargo (user info) at 2004-10-18 13:40:30 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I wish I had a physics teacher like that
Submitted by Durae (user info) at 2004-10-18 13:32:18 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Maybe I would have reconsidered hating physics if Mr. Olsen had been my teacher.
Or maybe physics is cold, boring and inhuman no matter who teaches it.
Submitted by Herpes (user info) at 2004-10-18 13:30:54 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Haha... that reminds me of Mr. Edgerly, except he carpooled from Ann Arbor to just south of Detroit.
I think he might have been a little older too.
Submitted by Phinch (user info) at 2004-10-18 13:25:19 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I love physics. I should be a physics teacher.
btw, the arc should be jumping from one of his pinky's to the other. Unless, of course, he has a very large magnetic field emanating from his waist.
Submitted by zakalwe (user info) at 2004-10-18 13:24:51 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
+2 for centripetal
Submitted by professorfuckface (user info) at 2004-10-18 13:18:58 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Beefheart? BEEF FART.
Submitted by I_Have_a_Kristen_Fetish (user info) at 2004-10-18 13:13:41 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
No Comment
Submitted by AlwaysAnEagle (user info) at 2004-10-18 13:09:49 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
For nutty professors.
Submitted by MaximusPadus (user info) at 2004-10-18 13:06:03 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Cool. Nice writing.
Submitted by Feijuada (user info) at 2004-10-18 13:05:59 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Just the other day, my teacher got pissed at me, grabbed a textbook, threw it at me (it hit me), told me to get the fuck out, then threw a marker at me (that one hit me, too.) Good times.