Fifty bonus points (and a hotplate!) to TChem for correctly identifying the quotation!

I think I've said before that a good day of teaching is just about the best fun there is? Well, today was a very good day of teaching - I got to blow up table sugar, and throw carbon dioxide (really styrofoam balls) around the room, and make students act as electron carriers. And they enjoyed it! I got a great reaction on the table sugar thing - a couple people sucked in their breath, and one of the big cool guys in the class stepped back and went "Whoa!" when it flamed up.

And I got to share the story of the boneheaded guy I went to high school with who tried to make hard cider in his dorm room (fermentation, don't ya know) and succeeded in blowing up the glass bottle the cider was in. (I have a small repertory of real-world "this really happened" stories that have a biological application, and I tend to trot them out whenever they're even marginally appropriate. I have one that usually gets a big laugh, which centers around the question [asked of one of my grad school buddies]: "Mr. Roberts, can you get athlete's foot on your butt?")

I've decided to make it my goal in that class to do at least one demonstration or class activity each week. The group this semester has become very lively, and the best part is that the liveliness is directed at the class material or at me and not at text-messaging their friends in other classes.