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There's an old joke about that. A professor is giving a lecture, scribbling some formulas on a blackboard and at some point saying "it's obvious that ...". The

There's an old joke about that. A professor is giving a lecture, scribbling some formulas on a blackboard and at some point saying "it's obvious that ...". Then he pauses, stares at the blackboard, says "one moment please" and runs out of the door. Five minutes later he comes back in, with a wad of scratch paper in his hand, picks up the chalk and says "it is indeed obvious that ..." and continues the lecture.

HeyLaughingBoy 6y ago
Ugh! I remember taking a set of courses in Mechatronics years after graduation. For the uninitiated, Mechatronics is a combination of Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering and Software/Firmware to design & analyze software-controlled electromechanical systems. Most of the students had been in industry for decades and even I was almost 10 years out of college by that point. The Feedback Controls instructor, a brand-new Mathematics PhD, was fond of answering questions with a bewildered look at the board and the question, "well, isn't it obvious?" (probably not, if an engineer who hasn't solved a differential equation in 30 years is asking you). He was obviously very bright, but could not teach the subject to save his life. Thankfully, the guy we had teaching the labs was an engineer who had been building control systems his entire career and could answer the theory questions as well as the practical aspects, or no one would have passed that class! sorry, needed to vent :-)