Friday, September 27, 2013

Brought to you by the letter, "V"

Apparently, for now, there are only 24 letters that are "safe" in the alphabet as it is used in a high school setting. I used to toss about all 26 freely as I broke my bonds from the variable "x". X is overdone, I thought! Who made "x" the boss? Let's start sprinkling the other 25 neglected letters, I blithely demanded.

Well, starting last year, the letter "D" brought some giggles. As in, "okay students, find the "d" in this equation." TEE HEE HEE! Ms. _____ is looking for "d"! Oh my word, REALLY. THAT'S a thing now? When did that become a thing?

So this year, I stepped lightly around the "d" landmine so far. Go me! Successfully navigating the other 25 letters. No problem. ... Update: Problem.

Today in Digital Electronics, we started talking about Ohm's Law ... V = I*R. There's a nice helping tool where you put the 3 letters in a triangle and cover up the letter you are solving for, and the remaining visual tells you whether to multiply or divide to find your solution.

First problem, let's solve for voltage. "Okay kidlets, cover up the V ..."

Tee HEE HEE HEE.

What?! Oh my God people! Okay, is there a sexual reference for I? For R? Are there other taboo letters no one has told me about yet? Should I assign that as a homework assignment: free association of making EACH letter a "thing"?


12 comments:

  1. Oh yes...in the world of middle school today, the whole class burst out laughing when we went looking for "P". Closely followed by the comment that, "Eww, gross, I can't believe they're allowed to call these things "#2 pencils". That's disgusting."

    Yay 13 year olds!

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  2. That reminds me of a maths class I had at uni, the lecturer wrote, w.t.f. as an abbreviation for "want to find". 300+ students erupted into laughter. The lecturer then asks "Does that mean something else to you guys?" . This was answered by a yell from the far back of the room: "No, that's exactly what we are all thinking in this class!"

    Yay 19 year olds! :P

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  3. In my middle school world today, there was an advisory hangman game (theme: kindness). The co-advisor chose the word compassion. First letters guessed were a and s. Game over.

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  5. In calculus I have to put f(u) to represent substitution in derivatives and that always gets some giggles.

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  6. Oh my! Even less letters to use. Very funny, but now:
    d, v, f, u, p, ass, wtf .... AND a number.

    Thanks for the morning giggles.

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  7. Anonymous3:40 PM

    Somewhat sad that this is the way these kids react to such things. Being in the younger generation (21 years old) I can see the humor in these little perverse sayings, but I think they could be easily managed in the classroom with a simple chuckle yourself (not really encouraging, but not drawing attention to it). It sounds like you have done a good job though at controlling the situation.

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