I recently taught a pre-nursing course of 40 students. A short two page case study about ibuprofen allergies was assigned. In the written discussion that followed, ibuprofen was spelled incorrectly as follow:
Ibprofen (4 students)
Ibprofan
Ibiprohen
Ibuprfin (2 students)
Ibrepropin
Ibprofin
Ibeprofun
Ibuprophin
Ibuprophein
Ibuprophen
Ibeuprophin
Ibuprophine
My suggestion. Don’t get sick. Ever.
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| By the way, this is such a good fucking science joke that I can't even tell you! |
Ibprofen (4 students)
Ibprofan
Ibiprohen
Ibuprfin (2 students)
Ibrepropin
Ibprofin
Ibeprofun
Ibuprophin
Ibuprophein
Ibuprophen
Ibeuprophin
Ibuprophine
My suggestion. Don’t get sick. Ever.
My wife had a similar epipheny after taking a rigorous Human Anatomy course with other nursing students.
ReplyDeleteRegarding your "clever" graphic. Pride goeth before the crickets.
ReplyDeleteI teach a course in the physical science required for all the usual majors chosen by students around here who are planning on Medical School.
ReplyDeleteThe best students in these classes are inspiring. They're smart, hard working, engaged, self-motivated and generally pretty well read by the standards of this time.
That crowd rarely has smart slackers, but they do have some mediocre intellects who will work as hard as is needed and are mostly destined for hard fought B's. They might not make through (or even into) med school, and if they do they will no doubt be cookie-cutter doctors in some big organizational context where they can pass the hard cases to their brainier peers. I'll say noting ill of them.
Then there are the one who have neither brains nor discipline. They scare me, and I hope the C (or worse) they get in my class keeps them out of professional school. Sorry, young'uns, but your opinion is not as good as the next person's and I don't want my life depending on your skill and focus.
Oh, and it is a very good science joke, but my brain only seems to have room for two chemistry jokes and the slots are filled with "Ah! The element of surprise!", and "If you're not part of the solution you're part of the precipitate."
DeleteI B profane?
ReplyDelete"Ibeuprophin?" That must be the extra-deluxe version.
ReplyDeleteOr "El Ibuproferino" if you're not into that whole brevity thing.
DeleteI tell my health-sciences students (who are generally pretty good -- a selective nursing school and a good percentage of RN to BSN candidates who are already working in the field helps) that people in the sciences - especially the sciences where lives are at stake -- tend to be picky about correctness in spelling, citation format, etc. because it serves as a proxy for care in recording more vital things like decimal points and other measures (you do *not* want either 10x or .1 of your prescribed dosage). I hope that's still true.
ReplyDeleteSadly, somebody will need to interpret the science joke for me. I vaguely remember such diagrams (it's the structure of a molecule, right?), but beyond that, I'm lost.
You are right. It is a structure of ibuprofen, with the sciency name of R-isobutylphenylpropanoic acid. (I had to look that up. Thanks Wikipedia!) The OH in the lower right corner represents oxygen and hydrogen atoms. Adding UH- to the left of that spells "uh-oh." This is one of the better organic chemistry jokes but, to be honest, there's not a lot of competition.
DeleteCal did it. I hate him with a white hot passion. He's either golfing or eating gluten free cookies and I hope it rains and then he finds he's out of cookies.
DeleteFab
Aha! And thank you (and I now see that the "uh" is in a different font, which probably should have been a clue).
DeleteAs an organic chemist I recognized the structure and I understood the "uh" attached to the carboxylic acid to make the interjection exclamation of error "uh-oh." But this joke pales even by chemistry humor (the epitome of which was reached with the ether bunny and the ferrous wheel).
ReplyDeleteI think we should just concentrate on the shitty spellers.
See, Cal? Even Dumas thinks you're a dumbass! (That's a good joke.)
DeletePersonally, I found organic chemistry difficult. I had alkynes of trouble.
ReplyDeleteWell, I had lots of fun, especially in lab. We made aspirin, soap, nylon, and insect pheromone. The only disappointment was that, for some reason, they wouldn't allow us to make LSD.
DeleteOrganic was great - the chemistry with building sets. So fun!
DeleteYou know the real pisser here? It's that, if you take any of these geniuses to task for their inability to spell, they'll whine something like, "I’ve never needed to know anything exactly before, it was always OK just to have a general idea," or "Isn’t it picky to ask the difference?" or "They’re the same sort of thing, aren’t they?" So, as you're suffocating to death because one of them just injected you with curare instead of morphine, you'll know why. Just great.
ReplyDelete