Source: Quora
These two incidents happened during my 12th grade Biology classes. We had different teachers for Botany and Zoology.
One afternoon, Botany teacher was explaining(reading out actually) about biological weapons. Since it was noon, most of the students were asleep. There was a paragraph in the book which explained how Assyrian archers dipped their arrows in corpses to make it lethal.
I like history and war tactics. So, I was reading the paragraph eagerly with unusual interest.
One girl stood and asked him the meaning of the word corpse.
One girl stood and asked him the meaning of the word corpse.
Our so-called " botany teacher", without any hesitation told her that it meant ROTTEN CELL.
I was shocked by the answer. So, I stood up and told him that it's not what he was saying and that it actually meant a dead body. For that he argued that corpse meant both rotten cell and dead body.
According to Oxford dictionary:
Pronunciation: /kɔːps/ Definition of corpse in English:
noun
A dead body, especially of a human being rather than an animal:
the corpse of a man lay there
A week later, our zoology teacher was trying to make the class more lively, failing spectacularly.
I don't remember why in the middle of the zoology class he started explaining Mendelian genetics(which was actually a topic in the Botany book).
After explaining, he put on clever face and asked us," Do anyone of you know why the father of genetics is called Mendel?".
I still remember the way we exchanged looks. He looked around for an answer. When he found out that there won't be any, he decided to answer it himself.
This was his answer: " In the olden days, there were no microscopes or technologies like we have today. So, when Gregor came up with the concept of genetics without even using microscopes, the scientific community did not believe him. They called him a mental. That word evolved into Mendel".
Satisfied with his answer, he left the classroom humming an Ilayaraja song.
We were like,
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