A few minutes after class is supposed to start, Professor Brooks gets their attention, and everyone quiets down. Zoe sighs, texts her friend goodbye, for now, and puts the phone back in her pocket to pay attention. Maybe this class will actually be interesting, for once. Probably not, but who knows. All these other dumb classes that this school is making her take when all she wants to do is make some pretty things on her potter's wheel.
"This is Physics for Design Students," the professor tells them. "You might have noticed that this class runs rather long, that's because it's a lab class. What that means is, rather than sitting down and doing boring math all day -- which, since most of you are art or architecture majors will probably bore you out of your skulls -- we get to do experiments instead. Every class you get to do something, which might just help you learn all that boring math, and help you understand some of the principles that will be important to your chosen majors. Even if you don't realize it at the time. This will be a hard class, but it will be a lot more fun than you might have been expecting." She smiles. "At least, I hope it will be!"
She pauses for a moment. "Now then, what we're supposed to do today -- and what's on the syllabus for that matter -- is a overview of lab safety. But honestly, you all have done labs in high school, right? And even if not, most of the stuff in there is things you really don't need to know, especially for most of the experiments we're doing. Most of this would just be review for you all. So rather than bore you all for the next two hours with things you already know, or don't need to know, how about we get started right away?" She leans in and whispers conspiratorially "Just no one tell the administration." She leans back, and in a normal voice once again, says. "I'll be sure to tell you what you do need to know, if it's something you haven't learned already -- in this case though, all you should need to know is to make sure to wear your lab goggles today! We're going to be learning about the tensile and ductile strengths of metal and wire."
"You're going to be partnered with whomever is sitting next to you," she continues. "Don't worry!" she adds, as the class starts to hum a little in response to this pronouncement. "This is just for this experiment, you'll have plenty more chances to be partners with further people over the course of the semester. Now, will one partner in each group go and grab one of the plastic bins sitting over here on the wall? It'll contain everything you need, along with a bunch of pages to explain the experiment and what we're doing and why. I'll walk you through the first couple of steps once everyone has their bins, and feel free to come and ask me any questions, now, or later on in class. Got it? Go!"