SELECTED QUOTES
FROM "TROPHY WIVES..."
One day, somebody is gonna write a book about my
suffering and you’ll be sorry.
Well, at least I knew that I didn’t know anything –
kinda’ like Sockratiss.
Please do not take off points for the lack of artistic
talent. It is a defect from birth. I was dropped. Free fall, you know…
Ouch squared with no cherry on top.
I think the car will remain at rest as long as
friction isn’t exquisite.
When Harry met Sally, they didn’t do physics, you
know…
Niels Bohr argued with Einstein over hydrogen atom but
the subject of their argument was so very small that they remained friends.
Niels Bohr’s son became a physicist of about the same
age as his father.
Max Born was, ha-ha, born in
During the war, Born joined the German army but
instead of fighting, he just studied sound and other crystals.
Louis de Broglie has not done much – there is almost
nothing about him on google except for wavy electrons.
In Copernicus’s time, only the geocentripetal system
was considered politically correct.
Marie Curie won two Nobel Prizes: one was her own and
the other was her husband’s. But she did all the work, he was just helping out.
Paul Dirac was born in
Einstein’s second wife was his first and second cousin
but he loved her.
Einstein explained photoelectric effect; before him,
everybody was in the dark about light and electronics.
Einstein’s theory of relatives has proven true on many
occasions including in space and at low temperatures.
Michael Faraday was forced to read books because he
was poor and had nothing to do.
In his personal time, Heisenberg had seven children
and a wife.
Hertz’s father converted to Catholicism from
Jewishness but he still felt guilty.
Irene Curie was put in charge of the radium institution
for her work with polonium. But it was fair because she and her husband made a
lot of dangerous discoveries.
Women who swallowed too many x-rays could not be
fertilized unless a lead apron was administered above. Roentgen didn’t know
that because he died from non-Roentgen cancers.
Rutherford was a New Zealot who settled in
TABLE OF
CONTENTS
Fair Warning
5
CHAPTER 1.
Throw Me a Freaking Bone Here!
Personal
pleas, exciting excuses, optional opinions 7
CHAPTER 2. Brad Pitt is Overrated!
Brain burps and random
rants 35
CHAPTER 3. 6 + 1 = 6 if You
Ignore the Power of Batman
Fuzzy physics, ad lib labs
and mad math 61
CHAPTER 4. Metal of Merit,
Theory of Relatives,
Celebrity gossip at its
best 79
Ordering Information 113
FAIR WARNING
Smart
people learn from their mistakes. Wise
people learn from the mistakes of others.
Well,
here is your chance to be wise.
Step
one: buy the book. Done? Good. You are about to read a very funny (or sad,
depending on your perspective) collection of student quotes that come from my
own and many other physics classrooms. These pearls of wisdom were collected
over many years, and I finally got around to putting them together using old
notes, tests and papers and, as a last resort, the good old memory of mine. I
hope this book will be the funniest sad cautionary tale you will ever
encounter. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll start proofreading your own papers
more carefully…
Organizing
the quotes was not easy: By using intelligent guessing, I ended up dividing
them into four chapters.
Chapter 1 contains “statements with
attitude”: excuses, complaints, opinions regarding the task at hand, etc. It
will leave you shaking, I promise.
Chapter 2 is devoted to “brain
burps”: completely random utterances born, I am guessing, out of boredom,
desperation or just creativity gone awry. Lots of fun (for you).
Chapter 3 may require a little
physics background to be fully appreciated. In it, I present the students’
actual attempts to “do physics,” loosely divided into three categories: answers
to various test questions, excerpts from various lab reports and, finally,
examples of really fuzzy math.
Chapter 4 deals with the students
attempts to tell, in their own words, the life stories of various famous
physicists. Just like Chapter 3, the last chapter is best enjoyed by a reader
with some background knowledge about the subject.
A
disclaimer: while many names of various individuals and institutions appear
throughout the book, all of them have
been changed in order to protect confidentiality.
In
addition, I did occasional minimal editing in order to preserve coherence and
brevity. As mentioned before, some quotes have been resurrected from my “good
old memory” (yes, I know it’s an oxymoron) and may well reflect my own
imperfections as well as their authors’.
The book was generously illustrated by Alejandro Yegros, who may not yet be as famous as Chuck Norris but is a great artist with a fine taste for quirky humor. I am sure that the readers will enjoy his faithful rendition of student art as well as his stand-alone “education” cartoons. I am very grateful to Alejandro for lending his time and talent to this project.
In
addition, I would like to thank many fine individuals who made this book
possible and helped improve the manuscript. First and foremost, I am indebted
to my great friend and colleague Ira Nirenberg for his support, for his 1 am
phone calls and invaluable advice. I am also thankful to Larry Davidson, David
Derbes, John Minigan, Marc Reif and Elizabeth Riemer for reviewing the
manuscript, correcting my syntax and grammar and making many great suggestions.
Last
but not least, I owe big thanks to a huge number of befuddled and feisty
physics students who put their wild thoughts down on paper. I reserve my
special thanks for some members of the glorious and notorious WHS Class of 2012
who inspired me to finally do what I had been meaning to do since I was much,
much younger.
Despite
much help from various individuals, the book doubtless has its shortcomings.
The blame for them rests with the author alone – with one important exception:
all the misspellings in the student quotes are meant to be there.
Now
that you’ve been warned – enjoy and be
wise!
Boris Korsunsky