Humor

True Story : I lived it. Burnt into my hind-brain ( the bit we all had before we could walk upright ).

1979, Melbourne University, second year of my degree in science ( physics/maths ). Thermodynamics. Advanced. An older but trustworthy subject. Full of laws, equations, derivations and approximations. A blizzard of detail and ever so, so bloody boring. So I'm there in a lecture, about mid-way along in the course. As is my habit I'm sitting up the back of the lecture theatre. So far the lecturer had made what was pretty cut and dried into an interminable stretch of page after page of intricate detail, any of which could apparently be on the exam so : pens out & listen up ! Which I was doing and quite well I thought.

I think we were somewhere inside the spin networks of some ferromagnet, if I remember correctly. I was busily writing and taking it all in. My hand cramps. I stop writing and give it a massage. My mind wanders and I notice that the false ceiling of the lecture theatre has those repeated tilings of  some foam like substance made into squares. I notice how the pattern repeats and how it did resemble therefore a lattice. I imagine each tile as a magnetic domain and how the edges of which had a energy barrier and how, to traverse said lattice, an electron would be going up and down like a roller coaster. The lecturer seamlessly turns to a new topic, his voice lifting a little and becoming less monotonous. He's now talking about the student body. Fair enough I think, what of it ? Well, there has been a decline the lecturer is saying. Now if you put a strong field on that lattice, then the domains will tend to grow as the spins flip and the contrary aligned portions will shrink in size as it is energetically favourable. There has been less respect in the halls of learning the lecturer opines. Probably has, I think, standards slipping, that sort of thing. So the passing electron now has fewer transitions between domains and has a more constant kinetic energy, the wave function ..... in fact the lecturer says he appalled by the behaviour of some particular student. The wave function must alter to the new lattice energy periodicity, the Bloch wave ..... his voice becomes more strident. Flagrant rudeness and outright flouting of manners. Yeah I think, there's some bastards about. From the Engineering Faculty in all likelihood, pack of animals right there. Drunken slobs to a man. Good thing I'm a physics student.

Then there was silence and you could have heard pin drop. I struggle to regain my train of thought. The electron wave function ..... the lattice energy ... disrespect.

The penny drops. I sit bolt upright. My papers and pens go flying. I had been draped backwards over the chair staring at the roof, with my feet up on the desk. Everyone is looking at me, the lecturer with a very stern face. Is my face red or what ? I get one of those Einsteinian relativity seconds which has stretched to ten. Eventually I mutter some apology while bathing in the wry grins of most of my fellow students. No one is ever going to believe that I was thinking physics. Ever so slowly the lecturer turns back to the blackboard. We all re-enter the ferromagnet, while now I contemplate the ribbing I will get later on from my mates.

Cheers, Mike.

PS. I studied really hard for that exam, convinced I'd be marked down for my trespass of good etiquette. I lose one single point only for the wrong sign in an answer. The following year that lecturer goes onto choose some other student to supervise for an Honours thesis, but by then my mind had turned to medicine. 

Last week, I got eczema, gonorrhoea, diarrhoea, and haemorrhoids.  That's the first time I've ever won a game of Scrabble.

So my boiler broke yesterday & I had to get a man out, which begs the question; what the hell was he doing in my boiler?