SOCIETY OF PHYSICS STUDENTS - Stories

We've collected a few physics stories from the students here at UNH. Take a moment to read them and be sure to check back for more!

This story was submitted by the Spring 2001 Thermodynamics Class.

Dr. Olof Echt was the professor of the Thermo class that semester. He decided to give us a little demonstration with dry ice. He took a coke bottle, the 20oz. kind, with some water in it and placed a few pieces of dry ice into the bottle and capped it off. For safety reasons, he placed the bottle in a large cardboard box and taped the lid shut. Well after a few minutes nothing happened. So he decided to try again.

Again taking a coke bottle with some water in it, slightly more than last time, Olof placed some dry ice into the bottle. This time he placed much more than in the first experiment. He quickly capped it off and placed it into the box and taped it shut. After a few seconds we could hear the bottle expand from the gas created by the water and the ice. What happened next is something that we will never forget. There was a loud pop, and the corner of the box blew out. The bottle had exploded inside the box and the cap flew out of the box and hit the classroom wall! The cap created a large hole, about 3 inches with cracks running out from it. It was a great thing to see everyday for the rest of the semester and it wasn't patched up till the Fall 2001 semester!!

This story was also submitted by the Spring 2001 Thermodynamics Class.

This too is a story abour Dr. Echt. It was the last day of classes before the final and Professor Echt decided to give us a little treat, in a physics manner mind you.

Professor Echt came into the class with a few large bowls, a cooler, and two gallons of this weird pink liquid. Well it turns out that the liquid was a strawberry concoction that he had made the night before. What was in the cooler is the best part of the story. He had some liquid nitrogen from the lab downstairs. Now as we all know liquid nitrogen evaporates very quickly at room temperature, and when it does it extracts heat from what it touches. This explains why anything you use it on freezes.

So Dr. Echt pours some of the pink liquid into a bowl and proceeds to pour some liquid nitro into the bowl also. A little stirring, a little more nitro, and presto, we had strawberry sherbert! That was a great class.

Werner Heisenberg was driving down the highway a little to fast one day, when he got pulled over by a police officer.

The officer asked "Do you know how fast you were going?"

Heisenberg replied, "No, but I knew exactly where I was," so the officer was forced to let him go without a fine.

For more info or questions contact Nate at KingofGnom@unh.edu