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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/BrilliantRhubarb2935 on 2023-06-18 14:32:50+00:00.

This occurred many years ago at AS level physics in the UK (16-17 year olds).

I can’t remember the exact experiment but it was something like demonstrating the youngs modulus, basically you are expecting a straight line, until a point whereby the material yields and strains much further than expected by hookes law. So we’ve been asked to get on with the experiment and like sensible students we are all taking our measurements and noting them down. Then once we have our results and know the highest and lowest value for each axis we can choose a sensible scale and draw the graph at a suitable size, we also aren’t exactly sure where the yield strength is so don’t know how much stress we’ll have to apply to demonstrate the experiement.

However, midway through our experiment our physics teacher angrily asks us why we aren’t plotting any graphs, I explain that we are taking our measurements first so we know what scale to draw the graph at. This is not an acceptable answer, no apparently we need to draw the graph as we take measurements because this will allow us to spot any errors earlier during the experiment rather than afterwards (this is a bizarre argument in my opinion).

Well you are the teacher, I guess we’ll have to comply. So then myself and most of the rest of the class immediately start plotting what data we have, but with clearly not enough space to accompany the entire experiment. Eventually we run into the edge of the paper. Sir what do you want us to do now?

Even angrier than before he gets some sellotape and another piece of A4 graph paper and tapes it together to double the size of the graph paper, with some choice words including calling us smart alecks (which is fair because we are being deliberately annoying but it is also unreasonable for us to have correctly guessed the yield strength of a random piece of copper wire before doing the experiment, to adhere to some nonsense idea of plotting a graph by hand as you take measurements).

Realising what is about to happen, most of the class start laughing. Someone else also requests extra graph paper, and then another, and then another, I think pretty much the entire class requests a second bit of paper. Of course 2 pieces of graph paper stuck together isn’t enough, we need more. The teacher had to run to supplies to get another set of graph paper (not happily mind you). I think eventually I needed a 2x3 of A4 graph paper stuck together to make my comically large graph, most of the rest of the class with similar results. There were also other issues like our 30 cm rulers not being long enough to draw the hookes law part of the graph ect. which of course we made the teacher aware of.

Eventually the teacher throughly pissed off at this point is just standing silently at the front of the classroom.

“I bet you think you are all so funny don’t you.” Before storming out the classroom early.

Yes sir, we thought we were hilarious and your rule ridiculous as demonstrated.

Funnily enough, he dropped it the next time we did an experiment.

In the years after this incident many of us went on to get degrees in physics and several of us are practicing scientists. We had a reunion recently where we recounted some of the incidents we had with this particular teacher, including this one. None of us can see any reason why he came up with that particular rule, we can only assume he misinterpretted something on the syllabus, or was just trying to exert control.

Edit: added some context for non-UK users.