In December, Professor Adam McCollum gave an invited talk on the acoustics of vowels to a highly enthusiastic audience of approximately 80 first graders. The students were introduced to key acoustic characteristics of vowels, including frequency, amplitude, and formant structure. And three of the first-graders shoved pies in his face.
You may be wondering, “Why, Adam, did you let 3 kids pie you in the face?” Well, he made a deal with them. The deal was: they would record themselves producing English vowels while he was out of the room, and in the event that he failed to recognize the vowel in the Praat spectrogram, he would be pied in the face. And well…the teacher picked the quietest children to do the recordings.
So, upon returning, the recordings had background noise, which made it impossible to find the sounds they produced, much less the actual formant structure. With his integrity on the line, he honored the agreement, accepted the consequences, and let them throw their pies at his face.