Lentin quotes
1)
during
a 50 minute, highly mathematical, derivation that nobody followed, Lentin,
seeing the mystified looks on our faces took some time out to explain his
current step in the deriv
“… This becomes X-squared because
X into X is X squared…”
2)
Lentin
on being cornered about a misworded exam question.
3)
Lentin
after looking into his notes and replacing a sum of many terms with a cos
function, on the board
“… I think it might be some sort of series expansion or something… anyway this derivation I never understand, the maths just goes on and on…”
4)
Lentin
refusing to sign a practical journal.
Lentin: “ how can K
turn out as 1.03? This is wrong”
Student: “sir then what should it come to?”
Lentin: “I don’t know, because nobody has got this experiment
right in the whole class.”
5)
Lentin
once claimed in his second lecture of the year that triclinic crystals had all
3 lattice angles greater than 360 degrees but not equal to ninety. On being
asked how such a structure could exist. (It’s a little hard to picture…) he
replied
“ no but if you make it with sticks it will work. “
the student went on to reiterate that something must
be wrong because he couldn’t think of
how even two axes could be at an angle greater than 360 anyway.
“ if you read in the textbook you might find the full definition and diagram and it will explain everything”
The student sat down now, because Anagha who had had
one of her moments of genius, was now pointing the class to her book, where she
had managed to draw a diagram showing the controversial structure. (budding MC
Escher?).
As it turns out the textbook definition of triclinic
crystals is with alpha=beta=gamma all three less than 120 and not equal to
ninety and it was a mistake in his notes.
6)
Lentin
once replaced a sum of many terms with a COSH function and the same sum with a
COS function later in the derivation… When Sachin pointed out the discrepancy
He studied his notes for a while and then admitted his lack of knowledge.
“ You all have been studying quantum mechanics you must know better than me. Anyway it doesn’t matter just replace with whatever you want so it cancels out. The physics is important not maths!”
7)
Lentin
asking VIVA questions to a student.
Lentin: “ what is rise time”
Student : “Sir it is the time for a waveform to go from 0.1 to
0.9 of its max value”
Lentin : “No No! it is the time for a waveform to go from 10%
to 90% of its max value”
8)
Lentin
once explained to his student why intuition is best when testing components of
a circuit
“ remember you don’t have to trust the multimeter, See, it may be German or Indian or any country’s multimeter. “
More
will be added as we remember