Of Barrel Rolls and Ethics

One of the students in my class came out with pretty complex question. Call it ethics, call it anything…

Suppose you are flying a executive jet like Embraer or say, Sessna, full of passangers. When you are in the flight, your co-pilot offers you $3 million (or something hefty like that) if you perform a Barrel Roll. Assuming that he is capable of paying the amount decided and he is going to pay you if you win the dare, what would you do? (Remember that the barrel roll in aircraft is not a pleasant sensation to anybody, and you are carrying your employer along with some other people.)
Now suppose you are the employer. Will you fire your pilot after he has subjected you to his fancy maneuver, just for a paltry sum of $3 million?

Class: BME 201 (Electrobio)
Topic: Ethics of Animal Experiments

We are discussing whether there should be different treatment for violators against different animals, say dolphin and dog.

A Student: (in all earnestness) How do you differentiate between a dolphin and a dog?
A Voice from Back: Flippers, dude…

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Funnel Laws of Discussion

Sungshin’s Funnel Law of Discussion:
When 2 or more guys start discussion, they start discussing a lot of topics. But, after a while the number of discussion topics goes on decreasing, till the time the only topic being discussed is Girls.

Fleiger’s Inverse Funnel law: (After a lot of research)
Girls start with only one topic: Shopping. But then the topics go on increasing till the time the number of topics is infinite.

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An ode to Fick's Law

Got the grades from Electrobio mid-term on monday.

31 out of 37 students got a problem wrong. So we will get points for that if we submit it by today. Submitted the answer, got it correct [+5 marks :)]

5/37 got a question on Fick's law wrong. So, anybody who submits a haiku on Fick's law gets extra points. Wasn't expecting a lot of response to this offer, but what do I know... Prof got 7 haikus (if that is correct plural).

The best of them in my opinion is one by Robert (a grad student, of course.) So without further ado, as I have a lot to do, here's the winning entry (IMO):

Ode to Fick's 1st Law of Diffusion
by Rob Kirkton

Diffusivity ~
the particle migration
down concentration

Looks like engineers are getting poetic... And forgetting basic physics.

Location: BME 233 (Imaging) classroom

The prof asks somebody about Newton's second law. And in class full of BME undergrads, grads and Med-Physics people, not a single person can tell it. Shame on us... Looks like this theory is correct.

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Yess... we got action potential

So finally, we had the much touted "frog lab" this week. Our anticipation was pretty much high following the "in old days" stories by our professor. (In old days, you had to come up with your own frogs... The first frog doesn't know, but by the 5th frog they are wondering, "Hey, where IS Johny???" and they know something is wrong etc. etc.)

So we all crowded around the Frog Master (sounded like Beast Master to me, but on the wrong side of line), and watched him putting a frog painlessly to death. And I could watch it; guess I could have stood med school after all (Sorry Nilesh). As each frog has 2 (rear) legs, we had a lot of frog legs to go around, and we Grad students became actual doers instead of watchers on the undergrads.

So Jason gets one frog leg, and me, Chris and Amorn try our luck with the other one. Dissecting a frog leg was not something I was thinking of doing; I am not a wannabe medical doctor after all. But still, we plowed on. At the end Jason comes up with the sciatic nerve removed surgically from the leg. His leg, sorry the one he dissected could still be cooked and served (frog leg is supposed to be a delicacy). But when we finally got the nerve out, our frog leg looked like the frog had just lost an argument with a minefield, a classic case of "too many hands spoil the dissection".

We had played around so much with the nerve, that we were not expecting to see anything when the nerve was connected. Jason gets a perfect action potential, after fiddling around the controls for maybe 10-15 min. After that, we connect the nerve we got out, and give it a stimulating pulse, and yesss...

We Got an Action Potential!!!!!

Jason: My bump is bigger that yours…
Amorn: It's not the size that matters, you know...

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