Top Ten Dumbest Things that Have Ever Been Done by Students in Physics Practical Tests

I have to work with absolute imbeciles like these from time to time. They do some of the most catastrophically dumb things, and it makes one wonder how the hell they got into the class in the first place. Or how some of them have girlfriends.
The Top Ten
1 Overload resistors until they catch fire

The resistor is clearly marked at maximum 6W, and yet, you still think it would be cool to put triple that through it? What do you think will happen?!?!

A classmate almost did this once - we were so lucky it didn't leave anything worse than a tiny melted spot on the desk.

Wow. Even smarter people like physics students are huge idiots from time to time.

How dumb can people be? Society is supposed to be advancing, for crying out loud!

2 Put the entire circuit in a water bath at 100 Celsius instead of only the thermistor

I cursed a few expletives aloud when I caught my group doing this. The guy who was in charge when my back was turned currently aspires to be an engineer. How he will do that without someone being hurt or something exploding is beyond me!

That's certainly dumb. The worst I have done in physics practical test is doing reverse biasing of zener diode with a mili-ampere ammeter as current measurer (instead of using micro-ampere ammeter).

3 Suspend a pendulum from the ceiling and attempt to swing from it

How old are they? Really? I'm a hard-working physics student and I still have to put up with 6' tall 6-year-olds!

4 Try to set things on fire by focusing light from a high resistance filament bulb with glasses

A dumb thing to do. But would be even dumber if that would work. They tried it with my glasses, and they should know by this stage that, because I'm short-sighted, my glasses have concave lenses, which are designed to scatter light. This incompetence pains me greatly.

5 Wipe their USB drives clean by placing them within an inductor coil

I'd like to see the look on all of their other teachers' faces when they find out why they couldn't meet that deadline for that big assignment.

6 Broken a suspended spring by using various random objects as weights

Also, if the spring had not broken, you'd have the most pathetically inaccurate results. How are you meant to calculate its spring constant like that?

7 Scatter light from a UV lamp using glasses

If these people actually continue to take on physics, I hope they take entirely theoretical courses.

8 Using their iPhone charger leads and a magnet to create their own inductor coils

And I mean stripping the plastic from the cables. They are walking, talking, dangerous money wasters.

9 Using any metal object as a resistor

To them, anything can be used, no matter whether it's destroyed.

10 Using tin foil as an electrical insulator

Them: "Electrons travel through tin? Never would have thought it! "
Me: "Why? Because, ever since kindergarten, we never covered metallic properties or conductivity? "

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