craziest thing you've seen a professor do?

[bretticus]

My genchem professor was doing a demo about enthalpy or work-energy or something like that. He took a jug from a water cooler, filled it with 10mL of EtOH, and placed it sideways on a desk facing a stack of books. The experiement was supposed to show how the jug could use the energy to push the books off the table. Well, he lights ethanol in the jug, causing a HUGE fireball to shoot out the back. The books go flying off of the table, and so does the jug. It went flying across the room and set the floor on fire. Freaking awesome!

He also punted a piece of chalk in lecture, leaving a huge mark way up on the wall. Wasn't there for that one though.

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[chad5871]

Back in High School there was one substitute teacher that we had with a PhD (I know, a high school substitute with a doctoral degree! ) Anyway, whenever teachers would give him their lesson plans they would also include a seating chart. In between classes, he would memorize all of our names and then walk up and down the aisles and start calling us out by name, etc. It was actually somewhat freaky. He also would tell us these stories about how he had "talked his way" through many situations -- and that because of his great ability to control people through his speech, he had gotten to meet all sorts of celebrities like Jesse Ventura, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Julia Roberts.

I wonder what his PhD was in... probably Psychology!

 

[45408]

Profesor wore his wirless microphone into the bathroom before class....

I wish Leslie Nielsen taught my classes.


I actually did have our prof wear his wireless mic into the cafeteria and you could hear him talk to the cashier. My organic chem prof once yelled into the air vents for the people banging around to be quiet.

 

[ame2entre]

I have something that doesn't seem all that crazy, but it was really funny. One of my friends told me that his math professor would be right in the middle of lecturing writing on the chalk board and would fall asleep. His chalk would run on down the chalk board making a big squiggly line. The class would have to wake him back up (yeah, he was still standing). It was one of those things when I heard it I thought "it couldn't be THAT bad".
Well I have him this semester and yesterday I went in to talk to him. I asked him a question about an assignment and he started responding. Right in the middle of his sentence he slumped forward and was out cold. It was kind of freaky. I thought for a second that he might have fainted. About the same time I remembered my friend's story he started to snore. I just walked out and I don't think he remembered me being in there. I don't know if he is narcoleptic or what. The real scary thing is every once in a while I see him driving home from school, alone!. Hopefully he doens't fall asleep on the road.

 

[Med-tallica]

High School AP US History class, teacher pops in an old School House Rock video on some topic or other, after the credit rolls porn starts playing from Penthouse Publications, I'm laughing my ass off in between flashes of girl on girl action, the rest of the class is speechless, and the teacher just laughs it off and eventually turns the porn off. Best History Class Ever.

 

[Agent Splat]

i had an organic chem professor come in once with a bandage over his cheek and an obviously droopy from anesthesia mouth.

he mimed and used the chalkboard for the entire hour lecture without speaking a single word. oddly enough I learned more from that lecture than many of his other ones.

 

[socal78]

Rumor has it one of the professors in my department as an undergrad (neuroscience) starts off his comparative neuroscience class by holding up the Bible and talking about how it's not science, then holding up Darwin's Origin of Species and saying it's the truth.

At a baptist university.

I hear most of the class walked out when he did that. I never experienced it, though.

sweet

 

[green453]

During my senior year of HS, I had taken AP Chemistry and we would always have this substitute teacher (usually 2 times a month) who referred to himself as Dr. Crazy. According to our AP Chem teacher, he received his Ph.D. through an at-home study course (not sure in the truth in that). Anyways, he was always so radical with his teaching methods.. I remember one time he was explaining some type of simple organic chem theory (I forget what he was even talking about), and he said something to the fact that "these two atoms are heterosexual, but these two atoms over here are fags". Everyone stopped and a few students actually walked out in protest. We never seen him after that.

I seem to remember a TA describing the difference between an SN1 and an SN2 reaction in a way similar to that...

 

[Vincir]

Awesome thread. Here's my contribution:

So back in freshman year of college, I was in the last upper-level French class I would ever have to take, a class on French Literature. Most of my classmates were on similar trajectories and the class met immediately after lunch time, so needless to say we would often get a little bit tired and glassy-eyed.

One afternoon, we're all sitting in our half-stupor watching our professor lecture. Our professor had a habit of punctuating any point he was making by making a jabbing motion with his hand, which usually contained a piece of chalk. This afternoon, realizing that the kid in the front center of the class was literally falling asleep, he begins trying to get his attention by stating his name and pointing at him.

The piece of chalk goes flying out of his hands and pegs the kid square between the eyes. Immediately everyone in class jumps up in their seats and is bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, except for the kid with the chalkdust in his eyes. The professor picks up the chalk and proceeds to lecture.

 

[TheGalvaniFrog]

During a upper-level neurobiology class, the professor deliberately set his bare hand on fire. He dipped the hand in alcohol, lit it up, waved it once and then immediately dipped it in a glass of water. It looked reddish but otherwise fine afterwards.

Purpose: to demonstrate the temperature/pain conduction pathway . . . . . actually, I still am not quite sure.

 

[CampusHippo]

During my freshman mechanics class, the prof. was a pretty hotshot high-energy physicist, and I guess he didn't have time to test out all of the demonstrations he would do before class. He had taught the course before, and the college lecture demonstration services people would set it up before class so he could just walk in and start teaching.

The class was early, so to stay awake I'd always volunteer to help with the demonstrations. This particular lecture was on pulleys, so there was a block and tackle rigged to the ceiling with a seat on it. The Prof. sat on the seat and I volunteered to hoist the rope. I'd hoist a few feet, and then he'd lecture for a while, punctuating his lecture by pointing to the different parts of the rope and pulley, and then I'd hoist a little higher. Finally we got him up to the ceiling (about 30 feet off the deck), he finished talking, and asked to be let down.

I eased up my tension on the rope, but nothing happened. Eventually I let the rope go totally slack, and he still didn't move. He said a little louder, "Let me down please." I replied, "Um ... Prof. X, you're stuck." Everyone laughed, including him. Then he said, "Ok, very funny. Now let me down." And I said, "I'm not kidding, the rope is stuck." This time nobody laughed. He said, "Young man, let me down right now!" He didn't believe me until I totally let go of the rope for a second. Eventually we tied him off to a chair and went and got the lecture services people (with a ladder...). It turns out the pulley was a "safety pulley" with a ratchet that doesn't release unless you're standing directly under it.

Eventually he got down, but I think he always suspected I was trying to get him stuck on purpose.

-CHO

 

[chad5871]

These stories are so great that I think this thread of deserving of a nice, hearty BUMP!

 

[KELA]

I had a my calc I class with this britsh professor that would randomly go off on elaborate stories when he thought the class looked bored. One of my favorites was the story about moses and the 10 commandments and how he came down the mountain to find a gigantic orgy. He went on to discribe cetain scenes from the orgy. By the way this is a catholic school. The one about conjugate pairs being male and female and how nerdy math geeks who can't get any came up with it because they thought it was funny was pretty good too. He also stated one day that men and women are completely the same in their abilities with the exception of one thing, women have the upper hand because somehow they can wrap their hair up really fast in a towel on their heads and it stays like magic. I always looked forward to his random stories.

 

[PlayMeSomeMusic]

In HS, my AP US History teacher really hated stupid people, so there were two sides of the room, a stupid side and a smart side, with assigned seating.. If you got an answer wrong, you were demoted (smart side to stupid side, stupid side to leave the class), and if u said something really idiotic you would get a marker or even a desk thrown at you!


In undergrad biochem i had a prof sing a very long song about glycolysis.. she also had us act out the entire process of cell metabolism where different ppl were different proteins/ions/compounds and had height/weight/sex requirements so we would be kinda like proteins/compounds we represented... I was ATP (small girl 5'0") and had to sit on ATPase's lap (big guy 6'0'+)...

Sounds like an experience I had except it was Ecology and Evolution and we were made to do the Bee-Waggle Dance... Something about how bees mate or something..

the same professor also had us act out ion channels.. this one was funner.. we got to use salt-water taffy as sodium ions (and later got to consume them) to pass throughout the Na/K pump of people.

 

[Haemulon]

One of my professors brought in a large Eastern Daimond Back Rattlesnake (live) and let it loose on the floor of the class room. He did tell us ahead of time what he was doing, so we could all back up and give an appropriate amount of distance between us and the snake. That thing was huge, and was quite ticked-off from being handled. ANother day he brought in a juvenile aligator (about 2.5 - 3 feet long) and had us time it as it ran down the hallway. I loved that class.

 

[Karina 07]

My high school english teacher acted out scenes from plays very frequenty. One day, he asked a student to read one of the parts from "Romeo and Juliet", and himself took the other role at that part and let the student read from his desk while he himself wandered the classroom gesturing wildly. Well, there came a part where the two characters got mad at each other, and the teacher stormed over and lifted the student up by the shirt, literally out of his seat. The shirt ripped and the student fell to the ground... the teacher had to pay him back the price of the shirt later.

Good thing it was a male student.

 

[ReppinThePTC]

My middle school science teacher was beginning the topic of sexual reproduction and prefaced it by making all the students in the class both male and female stand up and scream penis and vagina at the top of our lungs for a few minutes to get over the awkward giggles and laughs that accompany teaching such a topic to immature 13 yr olds. Several other teachers down the hall came over to make sure everything was ok and they were quite surprised with what was coming out of our mouths. It definitely broke the ice and I thought it was pretty funny at the time, and still get a kick out of it today......

 

[youngnflyy]

Wow, there really are some amazing stories out there about the different things professors do! I've gotten plenty of laughs to ease my stress!

 

[nichtmeinbier]

I have an awesome bio prof. who gallops and makes horse sounds. Sometimes he takes jackets and purses and wears them around. He likes to tell us awesome beer stories and about the days in "the old country". He's the most awesome prof. I've ever had

 

[wisguy]

In my 1st semester physics class there was a kid that everyone hated. He was a premed gunner who was completely dedicated to making other people dislike him by interrupting class with pointless questions, refusing to help classmates and being an all around jerk. We'll call him Jim, for the sake of the story. Our prof was deriving a formula on the board when "Jim" helpfully jumped in to remind us all that acceleration was m/s^2 rather than the m/s that our prof wrote on the board. Without stopping his writing or flow, out prof continued, "Nobody likes you, Jim, so why don't you just shut the F*** up?" No one knew what to do after that, but we were all happy that the dingus gunner dropped right after that incident.

 

[MirrorTodd]

During a upper-level neurobiology class, the professor deliberately set his bare hand on fire. He dipped the hand in alcohol, lit it up, waved it once and then immediately dipped it in a glass of water. It looked reddish but otherwise fine afterwards.

Purpose: to demonstrate the temperature/pain conduction pathway . . . . . actually, I still am not quite sure.

Our professor did that too.

 

[45408]

Good thing it was a male student.

I bet all the guys in the class would differ.

 

[melissainsd]

In my 1st semester physics class there was a kid that everyone hated. He was a premed gunner who was completely dedicated to making other people dislike him by interrupting class with pointless questions, refusing to help classmates and being an all around jerk. We'll call him Jim, for the sake of the story. Our prof was deriving a formula on the board when "Jim" helpfully jumped in to remind us all that acceleration was m/s^2 rather than the m/s that our prof wrote on the board. Without stopping his writing or flow, out prof continued, "Nobody likes you, Jim, so why don't you just shut the F*** up?" No one knew what to do after that, but we were all happy that the dingus gunner dropped right after that incident.

Priceless.

 

[gary5]

I had a history teacher who was a body builder. He would flex his muscles as part of his lecture. The guys made fun of him, the girls loved him. I think he ended up marrying a student or ex-student (probably one that just graduated). I don't know if that counts as crazy.

Then I took this Art history class and our teacher consistently wore rather short skirts, which kept us guys entertained. I met with her for lunch to discuss an honors project. At some point during lunch, she said to me that she was "a good catch". I think I just ignored that. Got an A, of course.

 

[HenryH]

I had a history teacher who was a body builder. He would flex his muscles as part of his lecture. The guys made fun of him, the girls loved him. I think he ended up marrying a student or ex-student (probably one that just graduated). I don't know if that counts as crazy.

Then I took this Art history class and our teacher consistently wore rather short skirts, which kept us guys entertained. I met with her for lunch to discuss an honors project. At some point during lunch, she said to me that she was "a good catch". I think I just ignored that. Got an A, of course.

Was she pretty hot, though?

 

[gary5]

Was she pretty hot, though?

Ya, she was pretty good, for a teacher, that is. I really can't remember many hot teachers in undergrad.

 

[Piper2011]

In college I took a class where we did all sorts of animal surgeries and experiments, it was an awesome class, but small--only 16 students I think, and two TA's to help us with surgery.

Anyways, one weekend a girl in the class was hosting a party at her apartment for the class, and invited the TA's and teacher along as well. We weren't too surprised when the TA's showed up, but when the teacher did, well that was cause to get even more intoxicated.

The night culminated in keg stands. Well actually "monkey stands". We didn't have a keg, but the hostess had gotten this plastic cup shaped like a monkey's face with a straw coming out the top. So we filled that with beer, and put it on the floor, and had people do handstands against a wall to drink out of it. Not only did most of the class members do at least one, but we got the TA's upside down, and even the professor did one! Definitely one of the more bizarre but memorable nights that I had out. Needless to say the class was very close after this. Although it's difficult to take your professor seriously after that.

 

[jomed]

I had a physics professor who loved to blow things up, and he did so on a regular basis. One day, he got a balloon and filled it with two parts hydrogen gas and one part oxygen gas. He then tied the balloon to a yard stick. We then went outside where I had another yardstick with a lit candle on the end. He told me to put earplugs in and then hold the candle to the balloon with the yard stick. Needless to say there was a very loud BOOM! It set off car alarms in all of the surrounding parking lots. Our dean was in a faculty meeting at the time, and he said everyone’s face looked terrified. He assured them that there was nothing to worry about, and that Dr. X was at it again.

 

[sashie19]

My high school chem teacher would hook up the gas in lab to a funnel with a long piece of tubing. He put soapy material in the funnel and made gas bubbles and would then touch them with a candle on the end of a stick. You can imagine the results. All of this was done inside. There were permanent scorch marks on the ceiling above his desk.

 

[JennyB]

At UCLA our main walkway through campus is called Bruinwalk and it's a popular place for protests and demonstrations. There was an active Christian speaker who was standing on a chair with a bible screaming out random verses. The general chem professor walked by him and grabbed the speaker's briefcase and ran away haha

What's the professor's name?

 

[fyi411]

What a jerk. I had one professor who smoked in class to "show us the nicotinic" effects of cigarettes lol. I think he just wanted to have another smoke. He then pulled out some wine to show us the effects of a depressent. He was lecturing while he swirled his wine glass around Some stupid gunners complained to the dean and b/c of that he's not going to teach anymore..sucks

 

[green453]

I had a physics professor who loved to blow things up, and he did so on a regular basis. One day, he got a balloon and filled it with two parts hydrogen gas and one part oxygen gas. He then tied the balloon to a yard stick. We then went outside where I had another yardstick with a lit candle on the end. He told me to put earplugs in and then hold the candle to the balloon with the yard stick. Needless to say there was a very loud BOOM! It set off car alarms in all of the surrounding parking lots. Our dean was in a faculty meeting at the time, and he said everyone’s face looked terrified. He assured them that there was nothing to worry about, and that Dr. X was at it again.

Not to try to one up you or anything, but I had a gen-chem prof do that in our lecture hall. No need to go outside or anything. I am amazed that your professors balloon made that big of an explosion. Must have been a huge balloon...

 

[jomed]

It wasn't a regular sized ballon. It was very large!

 

[JennyB]

In undergrad biochem i had a prof sing a very long song about glycolysis.. she also had us act out the entire process of cell metabolism where different ppl were different proteins/ions/compounds and had height/weight/sex requirements so we would be kinda like proteins/compounds we represented... I was ATP (small girl 5'0") and had to sit on ATPase's lap (big guy 6'0'+)...

Was this for Bate's Chem 153A class at UCLA? She had quite a few songs from what I could remember, and she had a pretty good voice too!

 

[DoctorAck]

Alright typical HS Chem teacher with the typical rumors that he got kicked out of his graduate program for synthesizing LSD in the 70's.

He carried around a sock puppet named Avogadro, and would have long discussions with it during the class. Avogadro had a fully developed voice, and character. It was only allowed out of its drawer at certain times.

During a test, he would sit there behind your back FOREVER and all of a sudden Avogadro would pop out around your shoulder and say in an evil laughing voice, "Nice try girl, looks like you're going to fail this one," and "you definitely got that one wrong.. meh heh heh"

He had that darn sock puppet forever. My brother 4 yrs older and my sister 3 yrs younger than me both experienced it. Then, one day during my sister's class in the middle of her experiment, he set Avagadro on fire with a bunsen burner whilst screaming, "I'm melting, I'm melting... 6..point..oh...two....two....aaaaaaahhhhh!"

This one def. is the funniest of them all so far. sorry I dont have a story to share, but I just thought I'd give props to the person who posted this. I was literally laughing out loud.

 

[green453]

It wasn't a regular sized ballon. It was very large!

Nice. That would definitely be a good demonstration.

 

[baylormed]

My o-chem professor once made a demonstration of some reaction (I can't remember which), with a little dance...the only thing was, the dance required two people. Since no one volunteered, he picked the first guy he saw in the first row (closest to him), and they danced the little dance in front of everyone. Poor guy, he ended up on a lot of people's cell phone videos.

 

[CAS97209]

Just last week for a math class, we had just gotten through one of those real long problems where the professor writes on each board in the room, still isn't done with the problem, so he erases everything and manages to writes on every board again before finally finishing the problem. So anyways the entire class was in this stunned stupor after all that because it was a morning class and it was only 9:30. My professor lets out this scream of victory, like "YEAAAAHHH!", does a couple of Tiger Woods fist pumps, and then goes out into the hallway and drags this random kid into the classroom, and starts explaining the entire problem to this kid: "So we started with this problem that was one of those tricky bastards that looks simple, but OH NO, we weren't fooled by that, we knew what we had to do, so we chopped the sucker up and started working on each part, but it was so friggin' long that we covered every single board so I had to erase the whole thing (at this point he jumped up and down pretending to erase the boards) and start all over on that board (this is when he swung his arm and nearly nailed the kid in the head), and so we...(this is where he went into a long, boring mathematical explanation)". The kid snuck away after half of the explanation by my professor and when my professor finally noticed he was gone, he went to the front of the room, did a little hop in the air, screamed: "YEAAAAHHH!" one more time, and then he grabbed some chalk dust said: "We are waging war on these problems", smeared the chalk dust on his cheeks and said: "There now that I have my war paint we can go on and face other problems"

 

[shovmyfist]

I think this tops it all:

At PSU in Cell Bio a prof was teaching how sucrose has energy and took A LOT sucrose powder and poured it into a funnel with a tube. Lit a fire as he blew and created a huge Fire about 3 feet high almost touching the ceiling under the smoke dector. BEST part is after he did it was like hmm the fire alarm didnt go off lets try this again. And did it again. Seconds later the fire alarm went off was he was like guess class will end early today. Take note this is in a building that holds multiple lecture halls one that holds 1000 ppl alone.

Lucky he didnt do it under the fire sprinkler bc he would have a huge flood

 

[Nonnahs]

~bump~

So many funny stories here.