Do not mess with chemistry professors

They are fast. And they will get you.

According to the ChemistryBlog, that's Owen Priest, Ph.D., of Northwestern University, taking down that chicken.

Maggie Koerth-Baker is the science editor at BoingBoing.net. She writes a monthly column for The New York Times Magazine and is the author of Before the Lights Go Out, a book about electricity, infrastructure, and the future of energy. You can find Maggie on Twitter and Facebook.

Maggie goes places and talks to people. Find out where she'll be speaking next.

MORE: Entertainment

More at Boing Boing

Eurovision 2013: An American in London

The technology that links taxonomy and Star Trek

zyodei

I don’t think he was particularly quick, I just think he was chasing a guy in a full body chicken suit.
ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive

Don’t taze me, dude!
unefilleblanche

As a student of Dr. Priest (“OPP”), this was not out of character, though it was definitely staged. Kids played off his notorious temper often. My favorite was the day he told a student to “get the hell out of his classroom” for leaning her head against another student’s shoulder and wouldn’t resume lecture until she had left the room.

Interestingly, this is the man in charge of our university’s annual drag show.
KilgoreTrout XL

That was beautiful. Hopefully the fat chicken dickfore was seriosuly injured.
Anonymous

The Prof should’ve dragged the guy back in by the neck–how often does one get to choke a chicken in class?
Anonymous

just like kellogg’s ats greeaaaaat
Anonymous

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6bO4N7ZDE8

What Would Peter Griffen do?
DanielZKlein

And this is what happened next: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jpoki4wBwtA
Anonymous

backside attack!
- Anonymous
  
  I lol’d. Good Sn2 reaction reference!
Anonymous

At first the reaction is slow. Beyond a certain point, you will be able to witness a rapid reaction.
David Carroll

I’m surprised Prof Priest waited as long as he did. Is there a clip where he comes back triumphantly displaying the “chicken”‘s head?

It was also very thoughtful of him to take off his wireless mic. I’ve lost count of how many packs I’ve had to fix due to presenter-chicken battles.
artiloop

He moves quickly, but inefficiently. If he had just swung his legs over the bench, instead of jumping on top of it and then down, he could’ve caught the chicken in the room.

Maybe it’s a chemist thing, being so obsessed with intermediate steps and such as they tend to be…
technogeek

I was involved in a few classroom pranks, usually a bit more complexly scripted than this one, and deliberately scheduled for times when they wouldn’t disrupt anything important. Sometimes it’s pre-arranged, or — if you know the professor’s a good sport about such things — you may be able to get away with a quiet “give me a minute, then chase me out” passed as the chicken walked past him.

And, yeah, I’d at least give the professor a few feathers to clutch or wear as he returns to the class. He’s been kind about letting you play; the least you can do is let him take some of the applause.
- Anonymous
  
  This particular prank wasn’t scripted at all. From what I know, the most information the professor was provided with was that a prank would possibly occur at some point in the future. The student did it to raise money for a Northwestern University charity event.
Anonymous

I was expecting a more… exothermic reaction.
- Anonymous
  
  The exothermic and backside attack posts are brilliant.
Anonymous

As someone who attended NU and had to deal with this guy, I distinctly recall him chasing a student out of that lecture hall after his cellphone went off during class. He chased the guy into a bathroom stall and scared the living crap out of him. His temper is legendary.