Sparking chalk discovery…

I’m sitting in a lecture hall at Washington State University in 1986 listening to a 400 level physics oratum I had no business being in.  I love physics, but if you continue its studies, it converges on chemistry (which I wasn’t interested at the time) – not to mention, the speech was way over my head.  I was 19 at the time and only had two prior college level physics classes.  I should have taken the 300 level course instead.  But, here I was, bored as hell almost falling asleep due to the hangover from the De-Railers and day dreaming about the girl I had met the day before at Rathskellar’s in Moscow.

 That’s right the day before, not the night.  For some reason my friends and I thought it would be a good idea to start drinking in the bar on a school day rather than going to class.  This girl and I started throwing these 3 foot white straws at each other and then we danced.  It was awesome!  We met later back in Pullman – oh, I’m getting off track here, that’s another story.

So I’m sitting in the back of this lecture hall (easy to hide and nap) and I see the professor forcibly scratching at the chalkboard with a piece of chalk (I guess he was trying to make a point).  Through one half closed eye and ready to drift off, I suddenly see this red dot bouncing and jiggling on the chalkboard above his head.  This piqued my interest and I immediately became intrigued and woke up a bit.  I started scanning the room to identify the source of this “red dot” – and I found it.  He was a guy about my age and just as bored, but how he was able to get a laser pointer was beyond me.  They were expensive and relatively new.  These were very rare in the mid-80s among college students.  Anyway, it was fun to see him bob “the red dot” above the Proff’s head every time he turned away from us.  What made it even more enjoyable is that people would snicker and the instructor would whip around peering into the crowd – but nobody would let on.  I think we were all bored!

I can’t remember the Professor’s name, but he was pretty old.  He couldn’t hear that great and had bad eyesight.  I was tipped off about the bad eyesight fact because he would allow anybody to bring in as many notes they could cram onto a single 3×5 card to take tests.  I don’t think he realized that you could shrink most of a physics book with a Mac and a Xerox machine onto one card and it would still be legible through a Lupe.

Back to the “red dot”.  After another bunch of snickers, the Proff whips around and states, “I want to know who the comedian is this moment so he can come up here and entertain us all.”  Nobody said anything, so he goes back to teaching.  Still banging on the chalk board, the “red dot” resurfaces. This time the guy with the pointer get a little more bold.  Instead of bouncing it around above said Proff’s head, he starts to trace the chalk marks as the writing is being written.

After maybe six to eight words being traced, the Proff whips and around and shouts, “Did you see that?”

Nobody said a thing, we were in awe of being present to see someone getting their ass busted.

That’s not what happened.  The good professor’s eye’s started darting from the chalk, the board and back to the audience.

“You didn’t see that?  This chalk sparked!  It’s sparking chalk!”

After a few more stunned darting eyes from the Proff, he starts banging away with the chalk on the chalk board, trying to re-create the event.

Everyone was completely amazed.  We were all bored and hung-over – he was teaching a 400 level physics class.

Priceless.