A De Lorean for the Physics Majors

Or, Evan's Foray into the Arts

We were all in G118/G120, the classroom where we have Electrodynamics, early one monday. About a half of an hour early.
Now, note well the fact that a large amount of Physics majors in one place at one time allows for more mayhem.
A perfect illustration of this postulate was the fact that we got to speaking about "Back to the Future".
Then Evan said that he wanted to draw a De Lorean on the board.
His first attempt, by his own admission, was, at best, pathetic.
"Wait a moment..." I said. I went over to the computer, brought up a picture, and turned on the projector (which points directly at the whiteboard). We went to work.
About thirty minutes later, Dr. Anderson walks in, himself late, and says, "That's beautiful! The only problem is... now I can't use that half of the board. I can't erase something that great!"
It was only then that Mike brought up the point that there were actually three De Loreans for the three movies.
I noted that we'd only drawn a generic De Lorean, and not the Time Machine De Lorean.
Evan groaned.

On Potentiometers

Or, Why Nick Was Once Called Cheech

One day, during the Fall 2005 semester, Nick and Keith were working on a project in Dr. Anderson's Analog Electronics class. Nick has never had that much luck with discrete analog components, and this day was no exception. In fact, I'd smelled just a few fried LEDs from all over the room, but across the bench from me, they were cooking up the greatest batch that day. Nick hooked up a potentiometer, supposedly to delimit the potential on one of these very LEDs. Apparently the power supply didn't like him that day, for as I watched in horror and disbelief, the back of it lit up red, and burst into flames. Mind you, Nick was still holding the control stub of the potentiometer at this point, so I shouted, "Nick!" and shut down the power supply. He's all like, "What'd you do that for?" and goes to touch the potentiometer. "No!" I say. "It was just on fire!" "Oh."
Dr. Anderson is attracted by the fuss. "What's the matter, Nick?"
"Well, I just smoked the pot."
Somewhere, a pin dropped.
Everyone looked at each other in complete and utter silence, and then, exactly four seconds later, burst out laughing simultaneously.
"Good job, Cheech!" I declared, to redoubling laughter.