StuartFraser/ThirdYearQuotes

Rating system in use. Please feel free to browse these quotes from the Edit page rather than normal viewing. If there are quotes you feel are particularly good, prepend a symbol to the start of them. If there are quotes you feel are particularly bad, prepend a ~ symbol. Those with several s will at some point be collected to form a Best Of. Those with several ~s may at some point be removed. Please don't cancel the symbols out: something with " ~~ " is more informative than if it had no markings.

Also see CURSWiki: Enemy/Quotes

Lecturer Quotes

Dr. Little (Chemical Stability): "The metal would then be plastic."

Dr. Little: "You have your proverbial jet engine."

Dr. Little: "If you look at the Ellingham diagram, Nickel is right at the top, and Platinum is just above it."

Dr. Knowles (Mathematical Methods): "If you're in the Brazilian jungle and someone asks you about the Diffusion coefficient, this is a good way to derive it if you've forgotten."

Dr. Knowles: "Whenever you multiply matrices together, it's always useful to do so correctly."

Dr. Knowles: "Reinforced Concrete - useful structural material and it helps you multiply matrices"

Dr. Knowles: "The solutions you were basically quoted at last year"

Dr. Knowles: "The suspect measurements to be regarded with suspicion."

Prof. Greer (Kinetics): "Grains with more than six corners are huge and rapacious and try and take over the world."

Dr. Wallach (Materials Selection): "We could have used anything, but using Mercury as your metal is not sensible if you're building a bridge"

Dr. Wallach [describing a heat exchanger]: "Function is to transmit fluid from fluid 1 to fluid 2...."
-Wallach: "Heat. You do not want a radiator to transmit fluid from inside it to outside."

Dr. Rae (Crystallography): "If it was a Cambridge graduate martian."

Dr. Rae [putting up an overhead with the title "The Stereographic Projection applied to non-cubic systems]: "You have to be bonkers to do this is non-cubic systems."

Dr. Rae: "Draw a full half stereogram."

Dr. Rae: "We don't have time to look at non-crystalline crystals."

Prof. Windle (Polymers): "If someone gave you a bowl of spaghetti of infinite molecular weight you'd never get it to unravel."

Windle: "You have to distort the molecules and it ends up as a banana. This doesn't crystallise because it's hard to crystallise bananas."

Windle [misheard by SF, or at least he hopes so]: "It's pyroelectric and pizzaelectric."

Windle: "I'll pass this round now and you can feel that 0.07"

student: "You're written "LCPs are modest..."
Prof. Windle: "Yes, they're very humble."
[LCP stands for Liquid Crystalline Polymer in this context. The best known example is Kevlar].

Tautology award:
Dr. Midgely (Tensors): "The best way to picture this is with a picture."

Dr. Clegg (Ceramics): "If I want to keep pushing it down then it will get even lower."

Dr. Clegg: "So, why don't we build everything out of ginger biscuits?"

Dr. Clegg: "There are other [things that could decrease the fracture strength of a ceramic] - hairs, toenails, etc., but I'm not going into them"

Useless information award:
Student: "Is this affected by cooling rate at all?"
-Clegg: "Not if you believe the formula"
-Student: "And if I don't?"
-Clegg: "Then it might be."

Dr. Clegg: "Mainly because Australia is essentially Zirconia..."

Dr. Clegg: "Can I take this diagram off the board?"
-class: "Yes"
-Clegg: *does so* *pauses* "Ah. That wasn't very clever. I shall now redraw the diagram..."

Dr. Bristowe (Physical Properties): "Rather than the realspace with which you're perhaps more familiar"

Dr. Rae (Fracture, Fatigue and Creep): "The largest preciptates are those which have grown to the biggest size"

Dr. Rae: "This means that you can have a fracture test that takes two hours to set up and fails in ten minutes. At this point you should go and have a cup of tea."

Dr. Rae: "You need to be very careful with precipitation hardened alloys, that they're overaged and not underaged. They have to show passports."

Dr. Rae: "Unfortunately, that's only useful for standing on ice."

Dr. Knowles (Plasticity and Deformation Processing): "You end up with two matrices which look quite fearsome but which are actually like kittens really."

Dr. Knowles: "Here we have an axiom to state - in an isotropic body the principle axes of stress and strain coincide. Alternatively, it goes the way you push it."

Corus person: "You can always push people into the electric arc furnace, but you shouldn't because it increases the Phosphorus content of the steel and we can't get that out."

Mikiko Ashihari (Japanese): "You use the -te forms to connect birds"

Dr. Midgely [panning around on microscope]: "Sometimes you don't always get what you want."
-student: "In microscopy as in life."
-Dr. Midgely: "Microscopy is a microcosm of life."

Midgely: "Vulgar isn't a word used very much in microscopy, but it should be used more often."

Midgely: "I'm a bit of a perfectionist with [electron microscopes] - if it's not quite right then I'll [pauses, fiddling with microscope controls] I'll really screw it up."

Midgely: "Within the Nearly Free Electron Model I can do what I like."

Midgely: "They are the sumo wrestlers of the electron world."

Dr. Cameron (Polymer Processing): "That's not a stress, it's a time."

Dr. Cameron: "And the whole thing means this pen's no good."

Dr. Cameron [misheard by SF]: "There's a high catapult cost with injection moulding." (A high capital cost)

Student: "What does large technical mouldings mean?"
-Cameron: "Well, large means big, and..."

Dr. Wallach (Materials Selection, again) wins hands down this year's award for introducing a new topic: "You used to have to learn this garbage."

Wallach: "If a bicycle falls apart every time you bump into a wall slowly no-one's going to buy another one after the first breaks. If it falls apart when you hit a wall fast then they won't be around to buy another one so it doesn't matter."

Wallach: "We go to the diagram and find that, as we expected, we're going to make glass bicycles."

From others:

1B Physiology lecturer: "It's going to be very hot tomorrow for the picnic, and quite exposed, so if you are coming please bring a hat, suncream and NON ALCOHOLIC FLUIDS as well as food, something to sit on, binoculars and hand lenses. It would be somewhat embarrassing as well as ironic if the physiologists collapsed from heat exhaustion brought on by hypovolaemia, especially since I lecture that course."

Friends Quotes

Pundit: "He'll follow the foriegn policy of American Presidents since Truman..."
-Stuart: "Nuking Japan would be a bad idea..."

Requiem: "It could go either way. It will go either way."

Requiem: "What's happening in New Hampshire? Are they being ambushed by a madman with a banjo and a pig?"

Samantha: "I'm half Irish, but my other half doesn't exist."

Giorgios: "Apparently I owe you a second rank tensor."
[he then refused to answer the many questions of "wtf?" that followed]

ChrisHowlett: hmm. Mental energy expenditure.
ChrisHowlett: I feel like a little Magic. The blue theme deck this evening, I think
ChrisHowlett: actually, no. scratch that. I'm going to build a theme park. See you around.

(discussing hitting people with eights)
Requiem: It's something we've historically had trouble with, at Churchill - though the novices last term were coming along nicely (if the bank counts as people).

Samantha: "We ran out of the zoology museum, in a slow walking kind of way."

Stuart: I'm having difficulty formulating an answer to this statement that doesn't appear to convey the impression that I believe you are trying to take over the world.

From late-night MSN:
Requiem: If I hurry, I can get to bed before I have to get up for rowing
- ***Stuart gives you disbelieving look, due to darkness
- Requiem: Well. FSVO hurry. I'd have to move at 10 cm per hour or so in order not to make it to bed before 6am

Giorgios: "Isn't that because water is liquid, as opposed to air which is solid?"

Lizzie: "But in some ways it feels like that colour is a colour, even though even if it were it couldn't be"

Lizzie: "Then again if I could revive the dead I'd probably be doing ok anyway"

Samantha [discussing her Hebrew course]: "So now I can say 'And David lead the activity sheets to the Promised Land', if this is of any use"

Jo: "All the chocolate in the world wouldn't fit into my room, unless I had a really big room, and then I would lose all my clothes."

Requiem: "But I'm sure you're correct. I haven't actually tried to exchange Senji for momentum, but suggest that doing so would not leave the situation unchanged."

Stuart: I am unconvinced that socks are a panacea.
-Eni: I misread that as pancreas and was somewhat confused
-Stuart: I am also unconvinced that socks are a pancreas!

BBC TMS Cricket Messageboard Quotes

These are mostly intentional in some way, but get quoted due to high amusement levels.

Lady Snooty: "Surely there is a difference between not touring on "moral" grounds (when it suits you) and not touring because of specific death threats by Muslin extremists???"
-Flat Jack: "Those Muslin extremists are bad news, declaring war on all other fabrics."

Correct priorities:

Asked what he'd do if England lost due to Jones dropping Kallis whilst he was on zero:
Bryson Cackidea: "I'd go out and get drunk. Mind you, I'll do exactly the same if we win, if for different reasons. Further, if we draw I'll probably feel a bit bored, so I'll be in need of soemthing to do, and will hence probably go to the pub. And if it's a tie, well, that would be astonishing. I'd probably need a stiff drink or two in order to take it all in."

IGHOLS: "Besides, who are you calling a szpugi, anyway?"

Family Quotes

Stuart: "Oh, I've given you your Counting Crows CD back now."
-Mum: "Ah, good, I can eat it."

Becci: "It's like salt on a stick, except it's not on a stick."

Other Quotes

Daft BBC News headline: "Paisley in crunch Blair meeting"

: Of course, knowing the head of the DUP, he might actually be plotting to...but I'm sure that's not really what the BBC means

Q Does the President stand by his pledge to fire anyone involved in the leak of a name of a CIA operative?
-Scott McClellan? (White House Press Secretary): Terry, I appreciate your question. I think your question is being asked relating to some reports that are in reference to an ongoing criminal investigation. The criminal investigation that you reference is something that continues at this point. And as I've previously stated, while that investigation is ongoing, the White House is not going to comment on it. The President directed the White House to cooperate fully with the investigation, and as part of cooperating fully with the investigation, we made a decision that we weren't going to comment on it while it is ongoing.

(some context for this: Adam Gilchrist, Australian wicketkeeper-batsman extraordinaire, is widely respected for 'walking' - i.e. giving himself out if he knows he was - in close decisions. He'd just said he wasn't going to change that in the Ashes, leading to this question):
Interviewer: "Adam, would you walk if Australia were two runs short of victory with one wicket remaining in the final Test?"
-Gilchrist: "I wouldn't nick it."

BBC News link text: "Pope holds huge Mass in Germany"
(/me hopes he has strong arms...)