What else did your teachers tell you. 4

[JCreamerII]

Taking a thought from the a post I just read, what did a teacher tell you as fact, that was wrong?

I had a Biology teacher tell my class that lobsters were red. We started a new club, LAG "Lobsters are Green". He obviously never saw one in a tank. Again this goes back over 40 years. But he was totally convinced that they were red.

Jim C.

 

[strongm]

He had (well, has) a minor habit of sometimes curling a twist of his hair around his finger when talking. We used the pay attention/don't pay attention technique (similar to the idea you mentioned) and by the end of the evening he was wildly twisting his hair at great speed whenever he spoke without realising he was doing it. Since ALL the rest of us were in on it this was all very funny.

The effect was short-lived though. It had worn off by the following day.

 

[SantaMufasa]

It had worn off by the following day.

His hair or the operant conditioning? <grin>

Mufasa
(aka Dave of Sandy, Utah, USA)
“People may forget what you say, but they will never forget how you made them feel.

 

[BadBigBen]

I remember well, the day in High School, when my Biology teacher locked us into the Biology lab, and locking the windows...

reason, someone had found the butyric acid and left the stopper open, and since no one said anything, so he decided to punish us...

needless to say, our olfactory senses where badly accosted that period...

Ben
"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."
How to ask a question, when posting them to a professional forum.
Only ask questions with yes/no answers if you want "yes" or "no"

 

[SantaMufasa]

Ben, I can see that behaviour resulting in a law suit against the school district here in the LSA (Litigious States of America).

Mufasa
(aka Dave of Sandy, Utah, USA)
“People may forget what you say, but they will never forget how you made them feel.

 

[N1GHTEYES]

Speaking of lawsuits, and the fact that this thread is about what my teacher told me... My chemistry teacher (a great guy and a great teacher) told me to make some explosive.

Well, sort of...

After reading how to make nitrogen tri-iodide in Heinlein's "Farnham's Freehold" when I was about 14, I asked Wedgie (the teacher in question) whether the household variant of ammonia was up to the job. He said no, but that there was some .88 in the prep-room which would do the trick nicely. "Come in at lunchtime," he said, "and ask the lab tech for what you need". True to his word, he gave the OK to the lab tech and I spent a merry hour or so making and exploding various quantities of the stuff. It goes off with a very satisfactory BANG.

Ahhh... they don't make teachers like that any more.

To be fair, he didn't leave me completely unsupervised for the whole time. He popped in to see how I was getting on after about 50 minutes or so, by which time the air in the fume cupboard was a pretty solid purple-brown fug. Those were the days when chemy was fun.

Tony

 

[BadBigBen]

Mufasa, back in the 80's things where different, and it was a military school (DoDDS)...

and we took it in stride, after a few minutes you got used to the smell, and then all was well... ;-)


Ben
"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."
How to ask a question, when posting them to a professional forum.
Only ask questions with yes/no answers if you want "yes" or "no"

 

[hjgoldstein]

I am reminded of our chemistry teacher back in about 1971 or 1972.

He had a party trick he apparently used once each year which he called "French Rocket Fuel". He claimed that this was used to power the French Space Program.

We had just finished making some nitric acid in the lab and he said that the French combined this with natural turpentine for their rockets.

He put some of the acid into a test-tube and put it in a holder at an angle. Then he put two or three drops of turps into the test-tube and the result was an almighty explosion.

We were all shocked/amazed/impressed.

Of course, he carried on with the act by rushing over to the carefully placed bottle of alkali he had to neutralise the acid on his face and hands. What a pro! Good bloke, Robin Moorshead.


It is time for pacifists to stand up and fight for their beliefs.

 

[KenCunningham]

In the early 70's my RE teacher (who's name sadly I can't recall) was an old 'Mr Chips' style chap who we could quite easily persuade to abandon teaching us about parables in favour of telling us about his time in southern Africa with the addition of (to us at the time) very exotic examples of the Swaheli Click language.

The internet - allowing those who don't know what they're talking about to have their say.

 

[Annihilannic]

As far as I can recall there are no clicks in Swahili (I used to live in Kenya), but there are in the language used by Kalahari bushmen (of the "Gods Must Be Crazy" fame).

Swahili is a beautiful language, I wish I had taken the time to learn it properly while I was there.

Annihilannic.

 

[BadBigBen]

Annihilannic,

you remember correctly that there are no "click" sounds in Swahili, and that the "click" language is that of the Khoisan...

so you have lived in Kenya, sounds quite interesting and quite an adventure, I must say...



Ben
"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."
How to ask a question, when posting them to a professional forum.
Only ask questions with yes/no answers if you want "yes" or "no"

 

[KenCunningham]

Thanks for the clarification, I guess my memory must have made the bad connection for me - It's really not what it was!

The internet - allowing those who don't know what they're talking about to have their say.

 

[mscallisto]

While in S. Africa 5 years ago working at Makalali (Twines) game reserve near Hoedspruit S.A., near the Botswana border, one of our Zulu rangers tried to teach the rudiments of Zulu and Xhosa click languages.

It was there that I concluded that one must begin learning how to contort ones tongue at a very early age to be able to make even the simplest click sounds.

It was nearly impossible for any of us volunteers to do.

Sam