Hey, students -- pay attention. Not to us, mind you, but to the syllabus provided by your professor. Kieran Mullen, a physics professor at the University of Oklahoma, has a fairly strict rule about gadgets in class: there won't be any, ever, under any circumstances. Balk all you want (understandable given his own clipped-on cellie), but if you sign up for this guy's class, you'll be flipping your phone to "off" and leaving your laptop in the dormitory. And if you try to blaze your own path and slip that netbook into the back row, you might leave bitterly disappointed. As you'll see clearly in the video past the break, Mr. Mullen sought to make a visual point that laptops weren't allowed in class (he calls them "a distraction"), and while it seems that the whole stunt was premeditated, most students acknowledged that his point was driven home. In short, he took a defunct machine, submerged it in liquid nitrogen, and proceeded to make the following statement:
"This is just liquid nitrogen, so it alone won't hurt the computer. But this will."
Find out exactly what "this" was by hitting that 'Read More' button there on the lower left.
@Knolly Wow, speaking of a real professor gone cold.. I mean, should it really be that way? I guess some of the students were shocked seeing him crushing a laptop using LiquidNitro..
Not gonna watch the video 'cause the power-tripping teacher is just going to piss me off, but seriously, I take all my notes on a laptop, and I'd be pretty pissed if a teacher told me I couldn't have it in class. Sure, I do dick around on the internet, but if I fail the class (and I won't), that's my fault.
That being said, I'm surprised at how many people in my classes DON'T bring laptops to class; I'm pretty sure I'm the only one in all of my classes except Computer Science....
@Knolly Man, if he doesn't like students using laptops in his class, then wait and at the end of the quarter/semester give them an F. If he did that to my laptop, I'd get his @ss for destruction of property.
What does OU's reputation as a school have anything to do with anything? Not only is OU a great school, but nothing would have changed had this taken place at one of your so-called "pinnacle" institutions such as Rice, MIT, or Caltech. As you say - "give me a break".
I am actually in this class, and was present for this incident (i was in fact 2-3 rows behind the kid taking video) . Dr. Mullen is actually a GREAT professor for the most part. He is able to get students actively involved in a discussion and gives genuinely interesting lectures (even for a basic mechanical physics class). This is the only time i can even remotely consider to be a "power trip" (as one commenter put it) or of him "going cold" (as another said). It was made clear from the beginning of the class (as in day #1) that no laptops were allowed, and he did what he needed to to drive the point home.
We're all sorry you're taking his class, on the fact that the rest of the world thinks he's a douche for doing what he did to drive the point home of no laptops.
I hope this traumatic incident does not affect you passing his class.
Frankly, with physics, it's not really easy to get all the symbols you need without having to point-click them on the PC. Only if one knew every ASCII key combo to get every symbol would a PC be useful in a physics class. I prefer drawing symbols and writing equations down on paper myself, and I'm sure a lot of others do as well. I use a laptop in other classes otherwise.
@inteller Per the Princeton Review, OU is in the top ten values in Public Education. It is also in the top five of public institutions in Rhodes Scholars, top in public institutions in per capita National Merit Scholars, at the top in the nation in international exchange agreements and has the number one weather program in the nation.
@Knolly Good point. I do agree that laptops are a distraction in class though. Although, those students paid to be their so shouldn't it be their choice whether or not they want to learn?
Stop right there... before someone makes a crack at the majority of meteorologists who make a living not knowing what the fuck is going on up in the sky most of the time... ah, there it goes...
@Knolly this guy needs psychiatric control ASAP...!!he is out of his mind.
and who knows, if he really confiscate one students laptop(from other class, because if i was there and this was my laptop, it were his head in the nitrogen not my pc) and destroyed it like that, he has to be fired, like one of my teachers 8 years ago who broke someones cellphone by throwing it in the trash can. long live YOUTUBE that will provide the proof.
@randomguy7531 That was just ridiculous and immature, specially for a college professor, he's ateacher not on Discovery Channel. I wonder if he hires a plane with a banner tied to it just to say "would you marry me?"...
@shadowj0 I really hate it when Professors and lecturers go off on a rant, start to get rather verbose, even yell. Sure they are human, but they are professionals too. It is really sad to see them lose their cool and end result....smash liquid nitrogen cooled laptops. What a douche indeed!
During both of my degrees (Electronics and Comp Eng BEng (Hons) and MSc (Dist) Mechatronics), I always took my laptop to class and made notes with LaTeX. Of course, I'd also take down handwritten notes of longer derivations and diagrams.
"Frankly, with physics, it's not really easy to get all the symbols you need without having to point-click them on the PC. Only if one knew every ASCII key combo to get every symbol would a PC be useful in a physics class. I prefer drawing symbols and writing equations down on paper myself, and I'm sure a lot of others do as well. I use a laptop in other classes otherwise."
I am using a laptop in physics class this semester, I used one last semester, and when it gets to be too much to keep up with using the equation editor and the character map, I just spell out the symbols. Writing delta-rho instead of Δρ is just not that big of a deal. The only class that I broke down and started taking paper notes in was Calc II, and if there'd been a reliable, affordable tablet available when I made my laptop purchase, I would have been just fine there too.
Now you've reminded me to look for a decent tablet PC now. Great... I was just narrowing my search for a new lappy. Thank you, thank you very much. LOL
@Knolly Students will always be sneaky! C'mon, for once, you became student, aren't you? lol.. I saw a link on the Oklama daily: http://bit.ly/how-to-kill-a-laptop
Its about destroying a laptop, but this time by shooting it with a gun. OMG
@randomguy7531 is the no laptop rule his or the schools? This is more like a control freak than power tripp.
If I was a student who used a laptop for notes and in this class I would definitely make a stink about this. You are paying (alot) to be there. How much money just got wasted? Liquid Nitrogen can't be cheap. Did he pay for it?
@Old fogie late bloomer Yeah because you are the only person that matters in class. Forget about all the other students around you that might get distracted by somebody typing away while they try to pay attention and take notes. A laptop can be distracting to the people around you, especially when you decide to play that game or go on facebook. Think of others next time instead of just yourself.
STUDENTS REVOLT- Teachers like this work 15 hours a week at most, and often they just send a Teaching Assistants into the classroom, because they are too important to waste their time with the likes of you. To them students are insignificant weak minded drones, whose only real function is to pay their bloated salaries and fund their undeserved retirement pay. In return for their large incomes they take three months off every year while you struggle on are expected to be thankful for their petty tirades and weak minded theories. And after they have finished suckling at the public trough of education, and drained it dry, they again demand another tuition increase so that you can go further in debt, to satisfy their averice and greed. You will be paying for these sorry excuses of humanity for the next 20 to thirty years. And they will still be here, fat, lazy and ossified, demanding more money from the next class of fools that will fund their lazy unproductive dead end careers. And are they giving you anything for all this treasure you are giving them?. You be the judge. We now have the worst educated generation in the world. And still they are guaranteed their jobs and their pay.
@(Unverified) Hahaha... Yea... Everything is moving digital now. It's stupid to say you can't take notes on your computer. What's to stop the guy behind you from watching you doodle on your paper. Or how about them counting how many times your head bounces up and down when you start falling asleep?
Granted, in my physics classes I never used my laptop, but it was very useful for me to take notes in many of my other courses. Even at public schools now you are not often the minority as a student with a laptop.
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posted February 21st 2010 2:54PM
If gadgets aren't allowed... How did someone film this?
@Knolly Undercover, law-breaking students will always exist!
@Knolly he never said anything about gadgets. only laptop. the gadget hating thing was engadget making stuff up
@DarrenMurph
Thank god, we don't have such professors in the CSC dept here at NC state.
@Knolly
Notice right after he says don't bring laptops and use them in class the camera gets turned off and hidden pretty quickly...lol
@Knolly Dudes personality is about as cold and brittle as that frozen laptop.
@Knolly
exactly what i was thinking lol.
@Knolly Wow, speaking of a real professor gone cold.. I mean, should it really be that way? I guess some of the students were shocked seeing him crushing a laptop using LiquidNitro..
Oh well, this is not the way how to treat a laptop.. And another, 'laptop-brutality': http://bit.ly/macbook-gundown-israel-airport
@Shravan I saw Professor Tom Conte drown a cell phone in a bucket. He is an ece teach at ncsu.
"Teachers - we can make anything look lame".
This reminds me of teachers I've had in the past who tried too hard to be cool or hipp.
@RLBurkes Actually, Conte doesn't teach at NCSU anymore. I believe he moved to GA Tech.
@Shravan State Pwns! Anyways....
@DarrenMurph Well, that laptop won't be spying on anyone
@thebrianiac
Yup, I'm at GT and taking his class right now CS 4290 - Advanced Computer Organization.
Not gonna watch the video 'cause the power-tripping teacher is just going to piss me off, but seriously, I take all my notes on a laptop, and I'd be pretty pissed if a teacher told me I couldn't have it in class. Sure, I do dick around on the internet, but if I fail the class (and I won't), that's my fault.
That being said, I'm surprised at how many people in my classes DON'T bring laptops to class; I'm pretty sure I'm the only one in all of my classes except Computer Science....
@Knolly: If murder isn't allowed, how did someone get murdered?
@Knolly
I'm surprised OU can't afford professors who don't get as easily distracted as this douche.
Another point which makes UT >>>>>> OU
@Knolly
oh yes, because we all know that OU is the pinnacle of higher education. give me a break.
@Knolly Man, if he doesn't like students using laptops in his class, then wait and at the end of the quarter/semester give them an F. If he did that to my laptop, I'd get his @ss for destruction of property.
@inteller
What does OU's reputation as a school have anything to do with anything? Not only is OU a great school, but nothing would have changed had this taken place at one of your so-called "pinnacle" institutions such as Rice, MIT, or Caltech. As you say - "give me a break".
I am actually in this class, and was present for this incident (i was in fact 2-3 rows behind the kid taking video) . Dr. Mullen is actually a GREAT professor for the most part. He is able to get students actively involved in a discussion and gives genuinely interesting lectures (even for a basic mechanical physics class). This is the only time i can even remotely consider to be a "power trip" (as one commenter put it) or of him "going cold" (as another said). It was made clear from the beginning of the class (as in day #1) that no laptops were allowed, and he did what he needed to to drive the point home.
@shadowj0 It's not about the prof being distracted, it's about the students being distracted/not paying attention.
@randomguy7531
We're all sorry you're taking his class, on the fact that the rest of the world thinks he's a douche for doing what he did to drive the point home of no laptops.
I hope this traumatic incident does not affect you passing his class.
Frankly, with physics, it's not really easy to get all the symbols you need without having to point-click them on the PC. Only if one knew every ASCII key combo to get every symbol would a PC be useful in a physics class. I prefer drawing symbols and writing equations down on paper myself, and I'm sure a lot of others do as well. I use a laptop in other classes otherwise.
@inteller Per the Princeton Review, OU is in the top ten values in Public Education. It is also in the top five of public institutions in Rhodes Scholars, top in public institutions in per capita National Merit Scholars, at the top in the nation in international exchange agreements and has the number one weather program in the nation.
@Knolly Good point. I do agree that laptops are a distraction in class though. Although, those students paid to be their so shouldn't it be their choice whether or not they want to learn?
@jcrash
Stop right there... before someone makes a crack at the majority of meteorologists who make a living not knowing what the fuck is going on up in the sky most of the time... ah, there it goes...
@Knolly this guy needs psychiatric control ASAP...!!he is out of his mind.
and who knows, if he really confiscate one students laptop(from other class, because if i was there and this was my laptop, it were his head in the nitrogen not my pc) and destroyed it like that, he has to be fired, like one of my teachers 8 years ago who broke someones cellphone by throwing it in the trash can. long live YOUTUBE that will provide the proof.
@randomguy7531 That was just ridiculous and immature, specially for a college professor, he's ateacher not on Discovery Channel. I wonder if he hires a plane with a banner tied to it just to say "would you marry me?"...
@shadowj0 I really hate it when Professors and lecturers go off on a rant, start to get rather verbose, even yell. Sure they are human, but they are professionals too. It is really sad to see them lose their cool and end result....smash liquid nitrogen cooled laptops. What a douche indeed!
During both of my degrees (Electronics and Comp Eng BEng (Hons) and MSc (Dist) Mechatronics), I always took my laptop to class and made notes with LaTeX. Of course, I'd also take down handwritten notes of longer derivations and diagrams.
@shadowj0
"Frankly, with physics, it's not really easy to get all the symbols you need without having to point-click them on the PC. Only if one knew every ASCII key combo to get every symbol would a PC be useful in a physics class. I prefer drawing symbols and writing equations down on paper myself, and I'm sure a lot of others do as well. I use a laptop in other classes otherwise."
I am using a laptop in physics class this semester, I used one last semester, and when it gets to be too much to keep up with using the equation editor and the character map, I just spell out the symbols. Writing delta-rho instead of Δρ is just not that big of a deal. The only class that I broke down and started taking paper notes in was Calc II, and if there'd been a reliable, affordable tablet available when I made my laptop purchase, I would have been just fine there too.
@Old fogie late bloomer
No, definitely agree with ya there.
Now you've reminded me to look for a decent tablet PC now. Great... I was just narrowing my search for a new lappy. Thank you, thank you very much. LOL
@espentan ...and clearly your professors didn't get through to you on the proper spelling of "hip"...
@Knolly Students will always be sneaky! C'mon, for once, you became student, aren't you? lol.. I saw a link on the Oklama daily: http://bit.ly/how-to-kill-a-laptop
Its about destroying a laptop, but this time by shooting it with a gun. OMG
@randomguy7531
is the no laptop rule his or the schools? This is more like a control freak than power tripp.
If I was a student who used a laptop for notes and in this class I would definitely make a stink about this. You are paying (alot) to be there. How much money just got wasted? Liquid Nitrogen can't be cheap. Did he pay for it?
@Old fogie late bloomer Yeah because you are the only person that matters in class. Forget about all the other students around you that might get distracted by somebody typing away while they try to pay attention and take notes. A laptop can be distracting to the people around you, especially when you decide to play that game or go on facebook. Think of others next time instead of just yourself.
@RLBurkes lol Conte is a great professor though!
@randomguy7531 Since you were present, was that actually a student's laptop, taken from the student right at the time?
@MBN The incident was staged to look like it was, but it was, in the end, staged. So, no.
@Knolly
He's clearly an attention whore, so cameras are encouraged I presume.
STUDENTS REVOLT- Teachers like this work 15 hours a week at most, and often they just send a Teaching Assistants into the classroom, because they are too important to waste their time with the likes of you. To them students are insignificant weak minded drones, whose only real function is to pay their bloated salaries and fund their undeserved retirement pay. In return for their large incomes they take three months off every year while you struggle on are expected to be thankful for their petty tirades and weak minded theories. And after they have finished suckling at the public trough of education, and drained it dry, they again demand another tuition increase so that you can go further in debt, to satisfy their averice and greed. You will be paying for these sorry excuses of humanity for the next 20 to thirty years. And they will still be here, fat, lazy and ossified, demanding more money from the next class of fools that will fund their lazy unproductive dead end careers. And are they giving you anything for all this treasure you are giving them?. You be the judge. We now have the worst educated generation in the world. And still they are guaranteed their jobs and their pay.
@(Unverified) Hahaha... Yea... Everything is moving digital now. It's stupid to say you can't take notes on your computer. What's to stop the guy behind you from watching you doodle on your paper. Or how about them counting how many times your head bounces up and down when you start falling asleep?
Granted, in my physics classes I never used my laptop, but it was very useful for me to take notes in many of my other courses. Even at public schools now you are not often the minority as a student with a laptop.
Negative points for failing to show any aftermath of the drop/smash.
@yankees368
funny how fast the guy shut down the video recording scared to loose his cell the same way xD
@wenwalk: did you just call his cell phone a slut?
someone hasn't accepted multitasking into their world . . .
@bolezhinkov
There's no such thing as multi-tasking.
@Steve2000
"There's no such thing as multi-tasking."
-Steve Jobs
@Steve2000
But Droid Does
@Steve2000
Steve Jobs agrees!
@thesafetylemur Humm same with MS as well.....
@bolezhinkov This guy or apple? :/