Confess Your Stupidity: Tales of Mishandled Tech & Awkward Experiments

[DennisN]

I was just writing in another thread about a stupid experiment I did when I was young. This made me think that it might be fun with a thread of such confessions from members. Most people have done stupid things; what I'm after is sheer stupidity; e.g. technology mishandled/misunderstood/destroyed, scientific experiments gone awkwardly wrong, mathematical ignorance, you get my points, things you're actually ashamed of.

Here is your chance for confession and absolution!

To be fair, I should start with myself. I've done some really stupid things of course, and here is one tale which I'm particularly ashamed of:

As a professional programmer I was once developing a dedicated installation software for another commercial software. As any good installation program, mine should be able to remove previous installations. I was very proud of my solution, it was lean and mean and written in C, and it used recursion for the deletion of files. It was fast as lightning, and I was working on a tight schedule.

The problem was that something went wrong when I was testing it. My computer died. Just like that. Blue screen. Very strange, I thought I had gotten a malware, some virus. This was over 10 years ago, and we did not have any good backup system at the company, so it took me three days until my computer environment was reinstalled and up and running again.

And then I finally started to look at my code again. I saw no problem, everything was fine. So I decided I had to debug it step-by-step. I followed the flow of the code, checked path variables and just before the recursion call, a call to another function which did what? Hey, it empties the path and sets it default to "C:\". Hmmm, why? And so I clicked "Enter" and bang, the recursion started again, fast as lightning it started to delete EVERYTHING from the computer again.
I had programmed my own malware, and run it twice. And then I had three more days of computer maintenance.

Ok, let the confessions begin...

 

[BobG]

My most misguided effort at scientific experimentation was done as a team with my next door neighbor. She was about 10 and I was about 9 and she could talk me into almost anything.

We decided to dissect a toad. She obtained the functional equivalent of chloroform, with nail polish remover being the closest we could come to that (it works on insects), to be used as a general anesthetic for the operation. That way, with the toad alive, we could observe the heartbeat and lungs. The experiment was awesome and worked just as we'd expected it to - we really did get to see the toad's beating heart and lungs!

And then the toad woke up. And then he jumped off the table... and started hopping away for his life. And then his intestines became caught on a stick. Yet, he still kept hopping on with his intestines extending further and further behind him.

The toad reached the street by time my friend's 12-year-old big brother caught us and he really gave us hell for torturing a poor toad. And then the big brother did the only thing that could be done at that point - he got his bee-bee gun so he could put the toad out of its misery. Except that didn't actually work! He fired bee-bee after bee-bee at that toad and, still, it kept on hopping, trying to escape! It was horrible!

He finally had to go get a cement block to crush it with. It only took a few slams of the cement block to solve that problem.

 

[BobG]

And, speaking of computers, I did play a part in a coworker's misguided experience, even though it was really my coworker that belonged in the Hall of Shame and not me.

It was the early days of offices having a personal computer and one of the first PCs with a hard drive (a Zenith Z-100). The software engineers made a rather strange choice for the 'format' command. To format a floppy, you had to enter 'format a:'. If you entered 'format' without specifying the drive, the command defaulted to formatting the entire hard drive - and my coworker routinely forgot to add that damn 'a:'!

Fortunately, we had a good back-up routine, doing an entire back-up every 6 months, with an abbreviated monthly back-up that only backed up files that changed. It was still annoying, restoring all of our programs and files, not to mention re-entering any data that had been entered since our last back-up.

My solution was to rename the 'format' command to 8 random characters. Then I wrote a Basic program that called on the renamed 'format' command and would automatically add the 'a:' if no drive was specified. Of course, given the history of my coworker's problems with that command, I couldn't resist a little humor. No matter what the operator entered, the Basic command would display messages warning the operator that his entire hard drive was being formatted and that he was losing all of his data. And, just to be thorough, the program deleted one somewhat large file, and then copied a different file to a new file with the same name as the deleted file - just to make sure the hard drive light would do some flickering.

Worked great! Never had another problem with that coworker formatting the hard drive. I eventually moved into a different office, but in the same general workcenter. And the hard drive failed on the PC, meaning a new hard drive had to be installed and all of the programs and backed up files restored on the new hard drive - except I never backed up that Basic program since reinstalling the software meant the original 'format' command was reinstalled and it would take precedence over the Basic program anyway.

Enter a new worker in my old office and my old coworker decided he had to show off my Basic program to the new worker. He told him to type in the 'format' command and hit 'enter'. The new worker knew a lot about computers, knew what would happen, and objected rather vociferously. But the old coworker insisted, saying this would be great! This will be the funniest thing you'll ever see!

So the new worker finally did as he was told. And you know what? My old coworker was right! It was the funniest thing the new worker had ever seen! The screams and expressions of my old coworker when the humorous messages didn't appear and when it finally dawned on him that he was formatting his entire hard drive were priceless! The new worker couldn't quit laughing all day!

 

[PAllen]

Introduction to Shockwaves
---------------------------

Early high school at the time. Brother and occasional friend into explosives as so many were in that bygone era. However, I was into 'designer explosives' developed from looking up reactivities and calculating, based on likely reactions, the precise ratios of chemicals for maximum reaction (using a milligram scale). Was familiar with a common home-brew explosive's chemistry, but disapointed in its exposive power. Figured out my own contact explosive which should be similarly sensitive, much more powerful; inactive in alcohol, active as soon as thoroughly dry. Unfortunately, the chemicals needed, even then, wouldn't be shipped by mail or sold at all to random person. Well, friend of brother who had minimal scruples acquired them in a manner that shall not be divulged. Experiments with 500 milligrams of explosive were resounding success. Jumped to 7 grams, set up as 7 separate 1 gram experiments on a large work table in our basement. (under a chunk of metal, on top of a polystyrene box, on top of a wad of aluminum foil, etc.). Using a long broom handle, stretching as far away as I could, touched the first 1 gm pile. Introduction to shock waves - I had not made 7 experiments but one bomb in seven parts. The house shook, I couldn't hear. Every experiment was a resounding success - heavy metal chunk on opposite side of basement, plastic box fragments all over room, none larger than 1/2 inch sliver, aluminum foil raining down in shreds. I had to be rushed to hospital to have my ears examined (fortunately all else fine). Eventually recovered full hearing.

 

[DragonPetter]

I tried to design a menger sponge capacitor.

I read something like "infinite surface area" and I immediately think I will make a capacitor with infinite capacitance.

I worked out the formula for surface area/iteration, and thought of some ways to build it. I figured how big it would have to be to store charge at a really high voltage without dielectric breakdown, so that it could be an ~infinite energy battery.

Then I realized I never considered the geometry and how it might affect the electric field, and so my infinite surface area didn't sound so promising. I didn't even want to start on the nightmare of trying to figure out the capacitance from that kind of geometry. Luckily, that stopped me before I tried to build one.

I'm still interested in making capacitors out of fractal geometries, but I don't know if its feasible. The closest thing that tries to maximize surface on a small scale is a tantalum capacitor that uses powder grains to increase surface area.

 

[ThomasT]

My most misguided effort at scientific experimentation was done as a team with my next door neighbor. She was about 10 and I was about 9 and she could talk me into almost anything.

We decided to dissect a toad. She obtained the functional equivalent of chloroform, with nail polish remover being the closest we could come to that (it works on insects), to be used as a general anesthetic for the operation. That way, with the toad alive, we could observe the heartbeat and lungs. The experiment was awesome and worked just as we'd expected it to - we really did get to see the toad's beating heart and lungs!

And then the toad woke up. And then he jumped off the table... and started hopping away for his life. And then his intestines became caught on a stick. Yet, he still kept hopping on with his intestines extending further and further behind him.

The toad reached the street by time my friend's 12-year-old big brother caught us and he really gave us hell for torturing a poor toad. And then the big brother did the only thing that could be done at that point - he got his bee-bee gun so he could put the toad out of its misery. Except that didn't actually work! He fired bee-bee after bee-bee at that toad and, still, it kept on hopping, trying to escape! It was horrible!

He finally had to go get a cement block to crush it with. It only took a few slams of the cement block to solve that problem.

Good golly Bob, that's absolutely disgusting.

 

[DragonPetter]

Also, my most embarrassing physics moment was when I was in high school and visiting a university to see if I'd want to go there.

I got to sit down with a physics professor and my mom, and we talked about all kinds of great stuff.

Then at the end he asked me if I had any questions. After having just read "The Elegant Universe" and starting to learn the concept of relativity, I asked him if it was possible to focus energy into a small space to warp the space-time since energy is equivalent to matter, and use this as a way to make anti-gravity as a form of propulsion.

He just sort of looked at me with a weird look on his face, and I think he tried to spare me embarrassment in front of my mother and just kindly said "no, I don't think that will work".

Only years later, I look on that and realize I basically asked him if we can make star trek warp drives. I guess this is the dangers of reading popular physics books for the layman. I still feel stupid for that one.

 

[lisab]

My most embarrassing lab mistake: I was making a dark-colored solution that required stuff* to be added to a volumetric flask, water up to the line, and sit on a magnetic stirrer for an hour or so. (Some chemists would flinch at putting a volumetric flask on a magnetic stirrer, but that's another story...)

I came back after an hour and was totally perplexed about the volume of solution in the flask. It was significantly above the marked line. How could it have expanded? There was no explaining it...I figured I must have screwed up somewhere along the line.

As I prepared to start over, I made the embarrassing discovery that the added volume was due to the magnetic stirring rod still in the flask .

*stuff = technical term for...you know...stuff

 

[ThomasT]

My most embarrassing lab mistake: I was making a dark-colored solution that required stuff* to be added to a volumetric flask, water up to the line, and sit on a magnetic stirrer for an hour or so. (Some chemists would flinch at putting a volumetric flask on a magnetic stirrer, but that's another story...)

I came back after an hour and was totally perplexed about the volume of solution in the flask. It was significantly above the marked line. How could it have expanded? There was no explaining it...I figured I must have screwed up somewhere along the line.

As I prepared to start over, I made the embarrassing discovery that the added volume was due to the magnetic stirring rod still in the flask .

*stuff = technical term for...you know...stuff

Wow! Leaving a magnetic stirring rod in a flask.?! You should be, and apparently are, totally ashamed of yourself for such an error.

Ok, I've moved past it. I just hope that you have.

 

[jedishrfu]

My favorite bad science experiment was when I tried to make a computer at home from nails and wire coiled around them to create solenoids. I wrapped electrical wire ten times around a nail (saving wire cause I figured I'd need a lot of solenoids) and plugged it into a wall outlet for the test not realizing that I really needed a DC source.

It popped the house outlet fuse which I replaced and some clocks were off by ten minutes so I fixed them all except the one in my parents bedroom. My Mom figured it out pretty fast and asked me what happened and I couldn't lie.

As I look back on it now, I recall having done a similar experiment when I was about 4 where I found an old frayed cord my Dad had removed from a broken lamb and tossed away. I went inside plugged it in and ran my hand down the cord to where the pretty sparks were. My Mom quickly buttered up my hand (1950's burn treatment recommendation)and took me to the doctors office.

Young experimentalists never learn!

 

[Hobin]

Ah, experiments!

I can think of plenty of stupid, small examples. You know, pouring cold water into a previously heated flask (don't do that, people); accidentally adding the wrong ingredient to a substance that was to create synthetic latex (we had 'foam' everywhere, it was quite hilarious, actually), and sneezing on a carefully calibrated frame we used to measure forces of some kind - among other things.

Here's one example I'm particularly ashamed of. Years ago - I think I was 15 or 16 - I and a couple of friends did a chemistry experiment to see what the influence of light on a substance (I honestly don't remember what) was. Among other things, we wanted to know if there would be any changes in color. In our stupidness, we took pictures of the substance with a camera with a powerful flashlight. It wasn't until *days* after the experiment that someone figured out why all cases looked like they had been exposed to a ridiculous amount of light.

 

[Hobin]

Young experimentalists never learn!

The only reason I'm not sticking random objects in my wall sockets is because I'm living with other people.

 

[lisab]

Wow! Leaving a magnetic stirring rod in a flask.?! You should be, and apparently are, totally ashamed of yourself for such an error.

Ok, I've moved past it. I just hope that you have.

Lol...it was at a lab I worked at a long, long time ago. That particular procedure had been done the same way for years - kind of a "this is the way we've always done it" type of thing. But it was new to me, I was just filling in for the regular person who did it.

 

[DaveC426913]

He fired bee-bee after bee-bee at that toad and, still, it kept on hopping, trying to escape! It was horrible!

I took my 7 and 10 year old boys fishing in Shediac NB. My son caught an eel. We decided to bring it back to show mom, so I decided it should not suffer. This would be an excellent lesson in mercy for the boys.

So I picked up the foot long eel to knock its head on the rock (that's how you kill a fish) and gripped it tight. But being slippery as - well - as an eel, it popped right out of my hands. I picked it up and and slipped right out. Again and again.

Finally, I gave up trying to hold onto it and just lifted it up like a forklift with both my hands. Now I had to bash it on the ground. So I'm standing there, cupping a foot long eel in my hands, just sort of "dropping" it onto a rock. Over and over and over.

Eventually, I find a stick (there were no rocks lying around) and start wailing away on this thing's head till it stops moving.

I don't know if it's dead, so I decide it is best to be sure. I get out my knife and start trying to cut its its head off. Again, remember, I can't actually grip it to hold it still, so I'm just sort of sawing with the knife while the thing rolls back and forth on the ground.

Eventually, I manage to somehow separate the one part of what is now a pulped mass of slime from the other part of a pulped mass of slime, and we somehow coax the whole mess back to the campsite to show mom.

The kids never went fishing again.

 

[turbo]

When I was a kid, our little town celebrated its sesquicentennial (in part) with a massive fireworks display. The field was just a couple of hundred yards from out house, and I wandered down there to watch the crew set up the display. They "timed" elements of the display by poking the smaller fuses through the much larger fuses made of gun-cotton rolled in brown paper. I thought that was pretty cool. The next day, I returned to the field and found about a 1' section of that fuse lying there. I took it back home and stuck the fuses of a couple of left-over Black Cat firecrackers into one end of that big fuse and lit the other end. Luckily, I had backed off a bit, and was standing in the "upper garage" (about a foot higher), because there was a horrendous explosion and I ended up on my back with my ears ringing. Never one to learn from such lessons, I went back to the field and scoured it until I found another section of fuse, and it had a hard lump in it. I found out later that the "lumps" were probably fulminated mecury (blasting-cap explosive), and had I lit the wrong end of the original piece of fuse, I could have lost a hand. That would have put quite a damper on my future avocation as a guitarist.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Some 30 years ago now, I shorted out Granada Hills Hospital, in California. It's a long story but suffice it to say that CT scanners were new and we didn't have good schematics for the subsystems yet. It was quite a moment when I hit the switch and the entire hospital went dark. Ooops!

I was once playing with 30 KV in an effort to make a new type of speaker. I could hear something arcing and was trying to listen for the source. I got my face too close to circuit and took 30KV right up the nostril. Now THAT will clear your sinuses!

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Oh yes, while designing a pwm cicuit that switched 180 VDC at about 10 amps [at about 100 KHz], I had made a mistake in the feedback which caused the output to quickly climb to max and then destroy the transistor. When it failed it failed dramatically and was at least as loud as a firecracker. As I burned through my reserve of IRF840 FETs in an effort to find the problem, my nerves grew more and more fragile. By the time I found the problem, my hand was literally shaking whenever I went to start the circuit!

Thinking back, IIRC, the problem was the slew rate of the FET driver. There was too much slope for the switching speed. I believe the capacitance of the FET gate was too high for the drivers.

 

[Danger]

Does blowing a church off of the planet count as an "oops"?
If it was on purpose? :uhh:

 

[DaveC426913]

Does blowing a church off of the planet count as an "oops"?
If it was on purpose? :uhh:

Only for your immortal soul...

 

[Danger]

Only for your immortal soul...

Whew! I'm safe, then. I don't have one of those.

 

[DennisN]

Thanks, fellows, for sharing!

Bob's format: Hehe, lovely story, computers can be fun and annoying.

Bob's toad/Dave's eel: Ouch, poor toad, poor eel.

PAllen's shockwaves: Why build seven small bombs when you can build one big? Demolition Derby!

DragonPetter's capacitor: I like that , that's pioneer work. Fractal electronics.

Lisab's chemistry: :rofl: Short but sweet story! Was that some kind of observer effect?

Jedishrfu's computer: That's ambitious - flintstone computing! Hey, maybe your solenoids caused some time dilation...?

Hobin's pictures: Hopefully you see it in another light today.

Turbo's firecrackers: Dangerous... I'm glad you were unharmed!

Ivan's hospital: Wow, major malfunction. I also hope your nostril is fine.

Ivan's transistors: That sounds like it was really annoying . Trial and error to the bitter end.

I have two more stories of my own, I'll post them later, I just have to write them first.
Thanks again for your honesty! I've really enjoyed reading, and I hope more confessions will come.

 

[QuarkCharmer]

I was once working on a deicing system for a plane, basically a bunch of heating elements that run through the stabilizers and such. This required a monumental amount of AC voltage, and, since you don't want to throw a switch with a boat-load of AC, there was a relay to do the dirty work for you, triggered by a small VDC signal to power the solenoid.

Something was up with the relay, so I had the cover off and was taking resistance readings through some of the inputs/outputs using a tiny bit of safety wire to jump some spots so I could read a huge series circuit instead of a dozen or so little pieces.

After closing the relay back up, and solving the problem, I told my co-worker to go do a ground test on the deice system. It basically runs the voltage through the relay and heaters but with a tiny current so you don't burn through the skin of the plane since it's not very cold at sea level.

Meanwhile I was putting the cover back on the relay, and when I put a driver up there to bolt the thing on I instantly took the whole boat-load of AC to the arm and was thrown to the ground... Because the bit of wire I was using was still inside the relay... and somehow worked it's way into a spot that jumped the main AC voltage to the screw I was messing with while touching the shaft of the driver...

Never used bits of unaccounted wire to troubleshoot again, and I never touched the shaft of an otherwise grounded driver while doing anything near anything remotely possessing a current. My whole arm hurt for a week, and frankly, I am quite lucky.

 

[Andy Resnick]

Excellent stories, all! I'll add mine in the spirit of encouraging others to take risks and sometimes play the fool:

I was employed at NASA (research scientist) had just received my NIH training grant, thus taking me to a "postdoc+" position at a medical school, where I entered the pool of incoming grad students enrolled in physiology 101 in addition to running a microscopy core within a clinical department (pediatric pulmonology). All the faculty in both departments- about 100 people- knew some 'NASA rocket scientist' was joining the group, with all the baggage that goes along with that. They were all excited to talk about space stuff and whatnot. Big things that go fast.

About a month after I started, when I first immunostained some cells (sorry for any and all jargon- it's just experimental procedures) I still felt the need to live up to NASAs reputation- exact, precise, accurate measurements; careful and deliberate process ("Failure is not an option!"), etc. Immunostaining takes about a full day and requires multiple 'wash steps'- I was *extremely thorough*- I carefully transferred sterile Millipore RO water to an endotoxin-free tube (no contamination, *pure* water) and made sure to dilute all the nasty fixing and permeabilizing solutions to the ppb or ppt level. Keeping track of every 0.01 microliter of solutions. (Spoiler- anyone who has done *any* biology can guess the error)

When I was done- an 8-hour process- I examined my cells, on a filter perfectly mounted flat on a slide using precisely 75 microliters of Vectashield with DAPI, exactly 100 microns of headspace to a 1 1/2 coverslip which was kept refrigerated and sealed in a closed box to prevent any fluorophore bleaching. and saw... nothing. No fluorescence. No cells! WTF?

So at the ped pulm meeting that Friday, I mentioned to the Chair- an old-school MD/PhD who is now the Dean- how hard all this bio stuff is. She had been reasonably amused by my presence; impressed with the NASA credential but she knew I had no clue how *strange* biology could be. Old-school MDs have an attitude- hers is justified since she had a full patient load (she has probably done hundreds of lung transplants), a huge research lab: call it $2million/year, ran the department, etc. etc. and did all that as a female in an extremely male-chauvinist dominated environment. I was all proud of my NASA mad lab skillz and mentioned all my cells disappeared, even though I was SO CAREFUL with the washing and the water quality.

She looked at me like I was the village idiot and said that washing the cells with water was about the dumbest fu&king thing she had ever heard of- using water swelled the cells until they all popped- and that those dopes over in Physiology haven't taught me anything. Then she laughed at me for a while- the rocket scientist ain't so smart, after all. And this was a very public shaming- all the students/postdocs were still fighting over the leftover food.

That wasn't that last idiotic thing I did- I spent that whole first year as a clueless newbie. Many would say I still am clueless :) Over time, I've learned enough to 'pass' as a physiologist when I want to- and now I'm extremely comfortable collaborating with biologists, chemists, engineers, docs (and physicists).

The message here is that you have to risk being an idiot to grow and move forward. At least I've gotten good at immunostaining...

 

[jhae2.718]

Excellent stories, all! I'll add mine in the spirit of encouraging others to take risks and sometimes play the fool:

I was employed at NASA (research scientist) had just received my NIH training grant, thus taking me to a "postdoc+" position at a medical school, where I entered the pool of incoming grad students enrolled in physiology 101 in addition to running a microscopy core within a clinical department (pediatric pulmonology). All the faculty in both departments- about 100 people- knew some 'NASA rocket scientist' was joining the group, with all the baggage that goes along with that. They were all excited to talk about space stuff and whatnot. Big things that go fast.

About a month after I started, when I first immunostained some cells (sorry for any and all jargon- it's just experimental procedures) I still felt the need to live up to NASAs reputation- exact, precise, accurate measurements; careful and deliberate process ("Failure is not an option!"), etc. Immunostaining takes about a full day and requires multiple 'wash steps'- I was *extremely thorough*- I carefully transferred sterile Millipore RO water to an endotoxin-free tube (no contamination, *pure* water) and made sure to dilute all the nasty fixing and permeabilizing solutions to the ppb or ppt level. Keeping track of every 0.01 microliter of solutions. (Spoiler- anyone who has done *any* biology can guess the error)

When I was done- an 8-hour process- I examined my cells, on a filter perfectly mounted flat on a slide using precisely 75 microliters of Vectashield with DAPI, exactly 100 microns of headspace to a 1 1/2 coverslip which was kept refrigerated and sealed in a closed box to prevent any fluorophore bleaching. and saw... nothing. No fluorescence. No cells! WTF?

So at the ped pulm meeting that Friday, I mentioned to the Chair- an old-school MD/PhD who is now the Dean- how hard all this bio stuff is. She had been reasonably amused by my presence; impressed with the NASA credential but she knew I had no clue how *strange* biology could be. Old-school MDs have an attitude- hers is justified since she had a full patient load (she has probably done hundreds of lung transplants), a huge research lab: call it $2million/year, ran the department, etc. etc. and did all that as a female in an extremely male-chauvinist dominated environment. I was all proud of my NASA mad lab skillz and mentioned all my cells disappeared, even though I was SO CAREFUL with the washing and the water quality.

She looked at me like I was the village idiot and said that washing the cells with water was about the dumbest fu&king thing she had ever heard of- using water swelled the cells until they all popped- and that those dopes over in Physiology haven't taught me anything. Then she laughed at me for a while- the rocket scientist ain't so smart, after all. And this was a very public shaming- all the students/postdocs were still fighting over the leftover food.

That wasn't that last idiotic thing I did- I spent that whole first year as a clueless newbie. Many would say I still am clueless :) Over time, I've learned enough to 'pass' as a physiologist when I want to- and now I'm extremely comfortable collaborating with biologists, chemists, engineers, docs (and physicists).

The message here is that you have to risk being an idiot to grow and move forward. At least I've gotten good at immunostaining...

Sounds like you were just doing biology with a homeopathic sample.

 

[fluidistic]

Biggest lab shame I can think of for me was during the French baccalauréat (final exams of high school that allows you to go to university of you pass with an average of 10/20) for the chemistry lab part. I was really weak in chemistry to start with; due to some reasons I don't feel like explaining.
There were 2 ionic solutions, one with copper ions and the other, maybe silver or nickel, I don't remember, linked via a wire whose ends were 2 different metal if I remember well. I had to put each end of the wire inside the appropriate solution in order to some current to pass. I basically put the wrong metals in the solutions and my metal turned all black instantly. I was thinking "uh oh, I think something's wrong, I never seen that in any book".
A guy who surpervised us came to me and told me "you put the wrong metal inside the solutions". Shame moment. Then thinking inside of me "really? Wow, uh well then I don't understand anything!".
I still managed to get a 12/20 in the physics/chemistry exam, which was my best grade in the whole year in this course.

 

[turbo]

I have one "lab shame" incident. Inorganic Chemistry was so dead-easy that it was ridiculous. Aced all the labs. Then I got to the lab final. I ran diagnostic after diagnostic and came up with nothing. I was running out of sample and running out of time, too. I was the last one left, and finally had to do something as time ran out, so I wrote "water" on my lab result sheet. When I handed it to the proctor (grad student) he burst out in laughter, saying "It figures that you'd get this one!" I wonder how "randomly" the samples were allocated...

 

[fluidistic]

Turbo, you just made me remember something. When I was 10 years old we had a Geography test. I remember 2 questions:
"The continents are:
-
-
-
-
-"
"The oceans are:
-
-
-
-"
I answered "soil" and "water". I knew the names of the continents and oceans but I didn't realize they asked for them. I got a 3/20.

 

[DragonPetter]

Turbo, you just made me remember something. When I was 10 years old we had a Geography test. I remember 2 questions:
"The continents are:
-
-
-
-
-"
"The oceans are:
-
-
-
-"
I answered "soil" and "water". I knew the names of the continents and oceans but I didn't realize they asked for them. I got a 3/20.

That is funny. Your teacher should have given you full credit. These kinds of situations of miscommunication still happen to me as an adult, and it seems to always give the person asking the question a false sense of superiority or some doubt in me just because we were on different wavelengths.

At a job interview, I thought the interviewer asked me "do you have any experience or knowledge in classical nuclear physics". This immediately put my mind in a bad mental state because I was trying to figure out the distinction of "classical" nuclear physics. I had to say no, and I wasn't sure what he meant. I'm sure he thought I was an idiot at this point.

His question was actually "do you have any experience in classical or nuclear physics" and I had just misheard him. Luckily they wanted me to succeed and lead me to give them an appropriate answer after just telling him I don't have any knoweldge of classical physics.

 

[AlephZero]

The kids never went fishing again.

The irony of all this is that presumably you didn't realize eels are amphibians. It would have been quite happy out of water for a few hours while mom admired it. In fact in the UK some eels migrate quite long distances (i.e. miles) overland - presumably to get back to the pond they or their parents were born in after their early development at sea, though the complete life cycle of eels is still pretty mysterious.

The principle that "If it's not moving then it's dead" doesn't work very well for eels. Often they keep twitching for a few hours even after they have been chopped into pieces small enough to cook.

 

[DennisN]

I promised two more stories, and here they are:

In another thread I talked about a failed experiment of mine which involved a capacitor. I was probably about 14 years old, and I was very interested in electronics, but I knew very little about it. I tried to build my own supercapacitor; I used some construction made out of two plastic tubes, where one tube was firmly fitted inside the other (the tubes were some distance apart). I attached foil to the inside of the outer tube and to the outside of the inner tube, nice in theory, not in practice. I tried my "supercapacitor" by connecting it to a 12V car battery charger. For a second or so, it seemed to work fine. But then it suddenly exploded, and blew out a fuse in our house. Luckily, nothing worse happened. I haven't tried building any capacitors since.

Another stupid thing I've done involved a firework rocket. I was probably about 13 years old and I thought I was young Wernher von Braun. I wanted my rocket to launch, explode and then return to Earth safely. I selected the biggest rocket I could afford, made a parachute out of a plastic bag and attached and "secured" it to the rocket in some way. I don't think I expected the thing to work, but I was determined to find out. On New Year's Eve it was finally time for launch. At T minus 5 seconds we had ignition, and at T minus 0 we had launch. Off it went, so far so well. At about T plus 3 it started to look like "Houston, we have a problem"; the force from the drag must have pulled the parachute loose, making it unfold during mission. Rocket+parachute=unknown trajectory. My spacecraft then took some weird turns, and then started to prematurely head back to base. This forced me and my friends at Houston Control to hastily search for cover. Finally the craft "landed" in a garden some 10 meters away from us, and then it exploded into a large number of green and bright objects on fire. The garden lit up like a scene from Star Wars. Nothing worse happened though, but I gave up my rocket building career.

I've also been shocked twice by 230V (AC standard in Sweden). Both times involved repairing a mains distribution block with the cord still connected to the power outlet. This taught me to always check if power cords are connected or not.

 

[Hobin]

The irony of all this is that presumably you didn't realize eels are amphibians. It would have been quite happy out of water for a few hours while mom admired it. In fact in the UK some eels migrate quite long distances (i.e. miles) overland - presumably to get back to the pond they or their parents were born in after their early development at sea, though the complete life cycle of eels is still pretty mysterious.

The principle that "If it's not moving then it's dead" doesn't work very well for eels. Often they keep twitching for a few hours even after they have been chopped into pieces small enough to cook.

:rofl:

 

[PAllen]

Turbo, you just made me remember something. When I was 10 years old we had a Geography test. I remember 2 questions:
"The continents are:
-
-
-
-
-"
"The oceans are:
-
-
-
-"
I answered "soil" and "water". I knew the names of the continents and oceans but I didn't realize they asked for them. I got a 3/20.

This calls for repetition of the famous:

Teacher: "How can you tell the height of a tall building with the aid of a barometer?"

Student: I would go to the superintendent and say: "I'll give you this nice barometer if you tell me how tall this building is"

Teacher: I was thinking of a method that involved some technical understanding.

Student: I would wait for a sunny day, and measure the ratio of the barometer's height to its shadow; pace off the shadow of the building; and use proportion.

Teacher: Actually, I wanted an answer involving physics, not just math.

Student: I would go to the top of the building, throw the barometer off the building, and from the time of fall, compute the building's height.

Teacher: jumps off building in frustration with the student's success in avoiding the 'right answer' while always being right.

(My variant of a famous parable with many versions).

 

[Ivan Seeking]

The message here is that you have to risk being an idiot to grow and move forward. At least I've gotten good at immunostaining...

You wouldn't believe some of the risks I've taken as a contractor. But every single major success in my career was the result of high risk - what some people might call nuts! At the end of the day, either you're a hero or the village idiot.

Simple mistakes can actually result in the most memorable and fun moments, though they may be somewhats painful at the time. Not my fault, actually, but while working on MRI systems I had one rather memorable moment. Everything in the MRI room was supposed to be stainless steel [my tools were made from beryllium]. But someone had inadvertantly left a regular chair made with ferrous materials sitting next to otherwise identical chairs made of stainless, in the control room [a big no-no!]. Not knowing this, as I often did, I grabbed a chair to go behind the magnet to make an adjustment but never made it that far. With my arm slung firmly through chair's frame, I only felt the tug of the chair torquing my shoulder for a moment before I was airborn and crashing into the magnet. When that field takes hold, the strength is incredible. There was nothing I could do but go along for the ride.

 

[Danger]

When that field takes hold, the strength is incredible. There was nothing I could do but go along for the ride.

It's a good thing that tooth fillings aren't ferrous.

I was kidding earlier about the church. I didn't actually blow it up; I just set it on fire. Also, it wasn't exactly on purpose. After all, I lived in the damned thing, and I certainly had no desire to lose either my Teddy bear or my Penthouse collection. I'm going to explain this, even if it bores you to tears.
My father was a preacher, and our house was part of the church. The front porch was a concrete pad about 7-8 metres wide by 2 long. The roof/canopy of it was supported by the building on the inboard side and by 3 hollow rectangular wooden pillars outboard. For some totally unknown reason, the genius who built the thing (in 1881) set those hollow pillars atop small blocks. That left 4 openings of about 2 x 1 cm around the base of each. That presented no problem whatsoever, until one spring when our bee-keeper neighbour's hive decided to bud off a new colony which set up housing inside one of those pillars. So here I was, in my full bug-phobia glory, with 5,000 armed enemies literally on my doorstep. In those days, one of my little fun devices was a (potentially lethal) stink-bomb. It was a medicine bottle (about the same size as an old photo-film canister), lined with aluminum foil for safety reasons. (That was certainly a misguided precaution.) Anyhow, the inside consisted of a 70/30 % mixture of pure sulphur and medium-rate shotgun powder, with a firecracker fuse for ignition. So, I figured that a snootful of sulphur trioxide might indicate to the little bastards that they might possibly be more welcome elsewhere. I set the stinker right beside one of the openings in the base of the column, lit the fuse, and deeked back into the house to watch through the front window (because I didn't want to be in the company of a garbageload of irritated things with stingers.) Wait for it... wait for it... ignition! The problem was that either I got a load of a faster-burning shotgun powder or the proportions were off. What was supposed to be like a toy stink bomb to flush the buggers out decided to go up like a Roman candle.

 

[DaveC426913]

And??

Did they get the message?