Using Humour to Engage the Humour in the Lecture

Student • Can be useful to keep the students

engaged
Andrew Robinson
• Break up long or “dry” sections of the
Physics and Engineering Physics lecture
• Keep the students thinking “What is the
Prof going to do next?”

And make ‘em laugh!

Things Not To Do Techniques I have found useful

• Insult or make fun of any student • Self Deprecating Humour
• Any hint of racist, sexist or any other –ist • Anecdotes
jokes • Amusing Examples of Physical Principles
• Physical Comedy
• The Absurd Answer
• The “How Not To Do Something” strategy

• I counterbalance the “British” card by

Self Deprecating Humour always highlighting “Canadian”
achievements
• I play the “Eccentric Brit” card shamelessly
• Highlight differences in British and
Spacewalk by Chris Hadfield or Steve Maclean
Canadian English when talking about Newton’s Third Law
“Action and Reaction are Equal and Opposite”
e.g. Thrust SST Supersonic car
http://www.exn.ca/iss/index.cfm?URL=http://www.exn.ca/iss/hadfield2.cfm

The Magnetic North Pole is in Canadian territory (for now)

http://gsc.nrcan.gc.ca/geomag/nmp/long_mvt_nmp_e.php

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If I make a mistake on a slide…
• Then in the next lecture I highlight it with a
pear symbol
• “Pear shaped” is a British idiom for
something going wrong
Anecdotes
• Add some colour to the lecture by telling
stories that happened to you
– e.g. The radioactive watch story
• Or to someone else
– e.g. The Tacoma Narrows Bridge

Millennium Footbridge in London,

Tacoma Narrows Bridge Disaster
England
• Tacoma Narrows Bridge , Washington
State USA Pedestrians only

• Suspension Bridge Collapse 1940 Had to be closed shortly

after it was opened
• Forced vibration of the bridge due to the because of violent
wind lateral (sideways)
oscillations

Tacoma Bridge Link

Amusing Examples The Poiseuille Equation

• Textbook examples are often very tedious • This has to do with speed of flow of a viscous fluid
in a pipe
• Spice things up with some funny examples
– A very good source of examples come from Typical Problem:
the Ig-Nobel Prizes

A 1.3 m length of horizontal pipe has a radius of 6.4×10-3

http://www.improb.com/ig.html
m. Water flows with a volume flow rate 9.0×10-3 m3/s out
of the right hand side of the pipe into the air. What is the
pressure at the left hand end if the water is viscous, with η
= 1.0x10-3 Pa.s

Pretty tedious!

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 The Penguin Poo problem Other good Ig-Nobel examples:
• Ig-Nobel prize winners 2005 in Fluid • World’s slowest dropping liquid experiment
Dynamics (viscosity)
• Fatalities cause by coconuts falling from
Polar Biology paper trees (kinematics, kinetic energy,
conservation of energy, gravitational
potential energy)
Uses the Poiseuille equation to predict the force of • The teenager repelling device (limit of
expulsion of the penguin poo, and hence how far it human hearing changes with age)
is thrown from the nest

The Tesla Probe and Electron

“Physical” Comedy 1
Stream in a Magnetic Field Demo
• Lecture Demonstrations
– Requires some experience to be able to make • Give the class the essential information
the demonstration amusing and informative about the physics
(and make sure it works)
• Frame it in an entertaining manner!
– Audience Participation is helpful

“Physical” Comedy 2 Make gentle fun of the absurd

• Act out the situation!
– For example, become a transverse wave
propagating in the lecture theatre
• Make sound effects!
– For example, the Doppler Effect
http://www.wfu.edu/Academic-
departments/Physics/demolabs/demos/3/3b/3
B40xx.html
• Is the calculated answer sensible?
– CD with diameter of 40 metres
– Supersonic Police Cars
– Trucks with mass 10,000 tons
– Road collisions with 50 kT release of kinetic
energy
– Astronaut with a mass of 143 tons
– Ion drive spacecraft moving 3 mm in 2 years

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 Not only from the students The How Not to Do Something
• I had a typo on my lecture slide discussing Strategy
the size of the atomic nucleus
• Real size 10-15 m
• I wrote 1015 m = 1,000,000,000,000 km!

• Big Atom! From the sublime to the ridiculous

Effective Powerpoint Presentations

• I use this technique to emphasise how

easy it is to do a BAD Powerpoint
presentation!
• Used in Phys 898 Special topics:
Communication skills and in EP490
seminar classes