Education

Professor shatters laptop poured with liquid nitrogen.

Some professors give warnings or grade deductions to students who fail to adhere to classroom policies. Others send them away with shattered laptops.

When Kieran Mullen, OU physics professor, noticed that students’ laptop usage was a distraction during his lectures, he planned a scene to get students to pay attention. During a general physics for engineering majors class Monday, Mullen placed a student’s decoy, non-functioning laptop into a plastic container and poured liquid nitrogen on it.

“He said: ‘this is just liquid nitrogen, so it alone won’t hurt the computer. But this will’,” said Lindsey Brinkworth, University College freshman. “Then he threw it to the ground and told him to have IT fix it.”

Since the classroom display, various students have considered bringing their laptops to a lecture session as a group to see Mullen’s reaction, Brinkworth said.

Don’t bring laptops into the class room!!!



OU professor submerses laptop in liquid nitrogen, smashes it to prove a point (video)

ou professor smashing laptop OU professor submerses laptop in liquid nitrogen, smashes it to prove a point (video)

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.

[Thanks, studentatOU]

Continue reading OU professor submerses laptop in liquid nitrogen, smashes it to prove a point (video)

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