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Discovering scientific culture in Paris

"When I was young, my parents always wanted me to go to sports matches I had no interest in. My father in paticular despaired at my complete and utter boredom throughout the games. I would regularly wander about staring at the fences, railings, seats, gravel, etc, etc, rarely taking interest in the game itself. If I'd had a Gameboy, I would have played it.

We went to France once. Here my mother stood aghast at my total disinterest in the majesty of the cultural capital of the world. My regard for Paris paticularly offended her. I was bored out of my tree, and if I'd had a Gameboy, I would have finished Metroid during that trip." Read the rest of this anecdote...

That whole bedroom thing wouldn't have happened if you hadn't tried to explain Quantum Physics

"One of the most enlightening and happiest moments I've had recently was when someone told me that the day after we ended up in bed together.

I've heard many examples of what a girl finds a turn on or a turn off but this had to be the most hoopy.

I won't (can't) go into the details of how we arrived at this situation but I'm there in the bathroom with her and for some reason I've go onto the subject of Schrodingers Cat and wave functions." Read the rest of this anecdote...

Evolution is just a theory

"In early September, I stopped by to visit my High School Bio teacher. I try to make a trip back to see him once a year, largely because he was the man who inspired me to pursue science as a career. It has been almost seven years since I graduated, but he's still teaching the same course. I make it a point when I come to sit at one of the lab benches in the back of the classroom to sit in on one of his lectures; just for old time's sake, I suppose.

As he began into his lecture; starting with some of the history behind it, one student (clearly in a somewhat confrontational mood) pointed out that the evolution was 'just a theory.' In the five minutes that followed, I witnessed the single best explanation of what a scientific theory entails that I have ever seen." Read the rest of this story...

Fudged exam results

"During a final exam in inorganic chem lab at Columbia, maybe forty years ago, we were all handed a dry powder and told we had three hours to determine what was in it. We knew how to do it, too. All except for one poor guy, the best student in the class, whose sample had become a carbonized bubbling mess that stank up the whole rest of the room. The instructors hung around the fringe of the room barely hiding their glee. They let the poor dupe agonize for nearly an hour, as he watched his attempts to ace the course turn to goo before his eyes, before they revealed that his sample had been an ounce of Betty Crocker Fudge Brownie Baking Mix. They told him later that they would have excused him entirely from the final exam, but that they just could not resist the opportunity." Source: http://www.sciencejokes.com/science-jokes/listing-during-a-final-exam-in-inorganic-chem-10842.html

What Does a Paleontologist Do?

"A couple years ago I was in Belize on vacation, and a Belizean friend of mine asked me what I did for a living. I said, "I'm a vertebrate paleontologist." He looked puzzled, and asked, what's a vertebrate paleontologist?" Not feeling like going through the whole "mammals that lived at the same time as the dinosaurs" shtick, I replied, "Paleontologists work on extict animals, like dinosaurs." At this point, my friend was roused, alarmed, and very concerned for my sanity and livelihood. He leaned forward, grasped my arm, looked very seriously into my eyes, and said, "But you know, they don't really exist." Source: http://paleo.cc/kpaleo/fun-aw.htm

The GBMF

"When I was 15, and at a selective intake school, I came across this rather amazing reaction. Not by chance either, I'd heard of people being maimed by it, so I naturally decided to try it myself. And I wasn't alone, there were about 10 or 12 of us. Of course teenage boys don't just want to do as well as each other, they really want to be the best, but this is where the fun started. The Reaction was that between Magnesium and Potassium Permanganate." Read the rest of this anecdote...

General science 12

"I high school biology we had to dissect a once living mouse. Well they had injected the arteries with a type of red latex, and the veins with a blue latex. Well when you pull them out and tie them together you can get a very reasonable rubber band. The teacher couldn't figure out where all these red and blue rubber bands were coming from." Read the rest of this anecdote...

Nuclear War What's In It for You

"Back in the day I took a history class that had as a reading assignment the reading of a book entitled 'Nuclear War What's In It For You'. I didn't read the book but took the test anywho. I ended up making the only 100 on the book exam in any of the history sections that made that assignment. Of course I was probably the only physics, and aerospace major in any of those sections. The real hoot was that there was a question that ask what the temperature of of nuclear ignition was. I did not know, so I winged it by giving my answer in scientific notation, and Kelvins. My prof. marked it ok, if you say so." Source: http://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=171819&cid=14318635

One Cool Dude

"In the second week of school, the society of physics students held a roughly annual welcome back party. As tradition dictates, we made our own ice cream with liquid nitrogen, 77 degrees Kelvin, as a refrigerant and aerator. I mentioned that it is possible to dip one's wet hand into molten lead, or drink liquid nitrogen without injury. I had done the latter several years earlier in a cryogenics lab, and remembered the physics of how it worked. Naturally those around me were skeptical. 'It will freeze your whole body. Remember Terminator 2?' But I was sure of myself. I had done it before, and I believed in the physics behind it. So I unhesitatingly poured myself a glass and took a shot. Simple. Swallow, blow smoke out my nose, impress everyone. Within two seconds, I collapsed to the floor, unable to breathe or indeed do anything except feel intense pain. The ambulance arrived. The police arrived. The journey to the hospital. The attempt to explain to baffled ER staff how something like this could happen. Then I passed out." Read the rest of this anecdote...

Bitten by the Nuclear Dragon

"At the secret Omega Site Laboratory, as six observers looked on, Slotin was training a colleague who was meant to replace him, one Alvin C. Graves. As Slotin demonstrated the criticality test, the screwdriver he used to separate the two sphere halves slipped, and the hemispheres came into contact. Immediately, all eight scientists in the room felt a wave of heat accompanied by a blue glow as the plutonium sphere vomited an invisible burst of gamma and neutron radiation into the room." Read the rest of this anecdote...