>>thermodynamics
>
>Jerry;
>
>How well I remember the above subject from my college days in electronics engineering, and then on to fluid mechanics! :) Dr. Frank Paxton, where are you today?
>
>Dr. Paxton had a twelve-inch long eraser, which he held in his left hand and in front of him, about two feet from his right hand. He would write with the right hand and erase with the left with one motion, always maintaining the 24 inch seperation between chaulk and eraser while he walked towards his right hand. He could walk very fast while writing! If you were not quick - too bad! Missed formulas were chaulk dust on the floor!


I had a couple like that, too! I also had one that put his lectures onto sliding chalkboards... As his lecture progressed from one board to the next, the next board would cover up the previous board. He had two walls with 16 total boards. He would leave the boards up so students could go to the boards after he left and make notes. Then, as high tech took hold, another put his lecture notes under an overhead projector, projecting them onto a screen. Unfortunately, this guy was the only prof of Anat & Physiology, and his notes were at least 25-35 years old, the same notes he took as a graduate student. He even had A&P topical jokes written in the margins of his notes, and as he walked back and forth in front of the class, with his arms behind his back, he'd always be glancing down, reciting those same yellowed pages verbatim. When he came to a 'joke' he'd raise his head and look at the class with a half smile, expecting the class to laugh. I never heard our class, or any other for that matter, ever laugh at his jokes. One day, on my way to class, I saw a woodpecker pecking on a telephone poll. We were in the unit on birds and I wondered how they could hammer their head against a pole like that and not get dizzy and fall off. At the end of that day's lecture, when he asked if anyone had any questins (rarely did anyone), I asked him "how can woodpeckers repeated use their beaks as a hammer the way they do and not get dizzy and fall off the pole?". He was taken back with a look of suprise that no one had every recalled seeing. He paced back and forth in front of the class for about 10-15 seconds, then turned and announced that "Woodpeckers can take care of themselves!", and smiled. There was a low rumble of supressed laughter across the room. The poor guy thought that everyone was laughing with him, when they were actually laughing at him. While leaving the class, a friend remarked to me, "Hear that Kreps, peckers can take care of themselves!". We all laughed so hard we couldn't catch our breath.
Tenur allows some amazing idiots to teach, unfortunately.

I had two teachers that were superb, Dr. Tommy McCord, my Organic Chemistry prof, and Dr. Broadwell, my Calculus and DE prof. Broadwell was an engineer with Chance-Vaught (IIRC), and brought tons of practical examples and applications to the classroom. It is why I love to model real systems so much.
That says something, though. Seven years of school in three institutions and only three teachers made a lasting impression, one of them for the worse. Most were mediocre. None were NL's.
JLK