Imperial College

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Imperial College is an educational institution located in London, China. It is otherwise known to Oxford and Cambridge students as Inferior College London. Its aim is to conquer the world by expanding its facilities everywhere; as a by product, people leave the college as graduates. The College headquarters are located in South Kensington, in a monocolored Rubik's Cube-like structure in the centre of the main campus. The structure, dubbed 'The Lair', houses the Rector, Richard the Magnificent III, who pulled Excalibur out of the mighty clutches of a lathe and has thence been the Rector of the College. Some suspect he might be a grue (whatever that is).

The Cube

[edit] History and notable features

[edit] History

Imperial College was founded in 1907 by seven lions, of whom six were particularly long, born from the same mother on the same day and also named John (the name of the 7th lion is Bruce), a winged nudist woman attached to a harp named Brunhidla and a hedgehog named Jack (dubbed 'the modest' by his colleagues since he was the only founder who refused to appear on the crest of the College). The first departments at Imperial included the Department of Silly Walks, the Worm Elongation Research Department (WERD) and the Department for Dragon Applied Research ("St. George"). It is interesting to note that the name of the latter department was later a source of strong object from dragons; changing the name of the department was an aim of the dragon strikes of the late 1970s which led to power shortages all over the UK and eventually the fall of the Callaghan government (see the documentary "Reign of Fire" for further details).

Throughout the 20th century the College has kept the tradition of researching the most important aspects of scientific endeavour and has since expanded its facilities to include more and more buildings. Thus, departments such as Mechanical Engineering were born. Mechanical Engineering in particular brought a form of musical culture to college: the melodious crashes of heavy objects and explosions can be regularly heard coming from the underground labs of the departmental building.

[edit] Features 1: The Bessemer building

Cubist's impression of the Bessemer building. "It did not require too much imagination" he declared somewhat frustrated to a bunch of students.

The last addition to the list of College buildings and departments is the Bessemer building, opposite The Lair. It is a wonderful light green building with a bright pink top and a *very* bright pink entrance. Once inside, one will be stunned by the extreme care that has been taken to make the interior as tasteful as possible. Bright green walls and the soft pink light that passes through the entrance and makes its way inside contribute significantly to this effect. The extraordinary effort has attracted quotes as well:

   “I absolutely love it! It is ingenious! I wish they built buildings like this in my time as well!”

~ Oscar Wilde on the Bessemer building

   “I see colours everywhere!”

~ Hippie from the 60's

   “It is... ummmmm... great... lovely, in fact...”

~ A professor working in Bessemer

   “In your face Calatrava! Simplicity? Who cares? Colour on”

~ An art critic wearing a huge hat with lots of planets drawn on it

Towards the end of the construction, a small chunk of bright yellow was added to the interior of the building on just one wall. That wall is visible from the exterior and completes a picture that would make a freshly resurrected Kandinsky prefer to return to his grave.

[edit] Features 2: The wind tunnels

Other interesting architectural features within the central campus include the Sherfield wind tunnel and the Lair wind tunnel. These are both narrow corridors that run from one end of their respective buildings (the Department of Spark Plug Engineering for the former and The Lair for the latter) to the other. As the buildings in question have a surface that is not negligible even by the most notorious engineering approximations, the tunnels have the function of taking wind pressure off the buildings themselves by channelling it through them to the other side, which in turn delivers the joy of transforming even the slightest breeze into what could only be classed as an "In your face Jupiter" grade wind-storm.

[edit] Features 3: The pipe orchestra

To complement for the refreshing contribution of the wind tunnels to unfortunate students who have to cross them in haste, the piping under the central platform (linking the brightly coloured Bessemer, the melodious MEng building, the towering EEE building that harnesses the power of the wind for the Sherfield wind tunnel and the blue rubic's-cube-like lair) also makes its presence obvious to the common student despite being meticulously hidden under the wooden planks that sustain the platform. It can achieve that simply by music. The thoughtful engineers that designed the platform and shoved the piping of half the campus underneath it had very good views on aesthetics, but unfortunately hardly any knowledge of the well-known and fearsome physical phenomenon of mechanical oscillation resonance. Thus, whenever the wind is strong enough for a human to conceive, one can hear what can only be described as a symphony of out-of-tune strings, badly squashed brass instruments, the engines of the USS enterprise all accompanied by a choir of werewolves. Of course this highly artistic musical ensemble has attracted a lot of attention from the public:

   It is just wonderful. Never before were my ears enchanted by something so majestic!
                                                                             ~A passing-by vampire~

   Sounds like the last howl of a dying banshee if you ask me!
                                              ~Tasteless student~

   What a wonderful idea for a script! I can see the title already! The phantom of Imperial College!
                                                           ~Yet another student, this one with a lame sense of humour.~

[edit] Features 4: ETHOS

ETHOS is IC's sports centre. Using state of the art work-out machinery and with a budget of approx £17m, it was a massive effort to gift IC with a world class sports centre. There were however some problems with it. To start with, its competition was delayed by almost one full year, leaving some eager students left out without a sports centre (as the old one was demolished) blatantly exaggerating that: "ETHOS took longer to build than some pyramidoidal Egyptian buildings that spring instantly to mind.". After a few months in function, the main water tanks apparently broke, and as they are located at the top of the building they created a flood that can only be described as "Moses reopens the waters, this time in London". One month after than incident, hot water supply went down for some obscure reason, and despite the bright yellow "Caution! Very hot water!" signs, some unfortunate sportsmen had to shower in water: "So cold that would make a gay lose a hard-on" as a student preferred to put it.

[edit] Features 5: Automatic doors

There are many automatic doors around the college, some intended to make life easier for the disabled. There are many classes of automatic doors. Shortly we can mention:

• The Tanaka round doors.
• The Tanaka-to-Meng doors.
• The MEng basement doors. Special feature: they operate quite noisily.
• The Sherfield automatic doors.

The common element that characterises all these doors are very slow to respond to incoming people and will open when an average walker is standing with his nose touching the doors. Also they might be slow, but they will open at anything moving at a great range. They also have attracted some quotes:

   The automatic doors? They open at ranges that would make a sniper blush.
                                                           ~A student, evidently obsessed with guns.~

   The new MEng basement doors? Absolutely amazing! They are slower than a student in the morning and make the sound of a cow's burp. Cool!
                                                                                        ~Yet another student, this one with funky hair.~

It is also interesting to note that these doors are card-operated. They will not allow anyone to enter the premises without a swipe card, except for high traffic hours. The problem is, however, that they will also not leave anyone GET OUT of the premises either. There have been cases where forgetful students stood late for work only to find out that they had forgotten their cards and had to spend the night in college! That is a particularly frightful experience since it is rumoured that the ghosts of the transistors come and haunt the college every night. Rain and the musical contribution of the pipe orchestra only make things worse. In reality there are no such things as the ghosts of the transistors. It is all about the results of medical research on grues, done in the bowels of IC. What people blissfully ignorantly call 'the ghosts of the transistors' are in fact something much worse. They are mutated grues, failed experiments on genetical grue vegetarianism that sometimes break out of their kennels, where they are supervised during college hours by a special team of intelligent computers, armed with laser cannons, developed from dragon technology -all inbred at IC-. The only things that seem to save poor people who encounter them are a very powerful dose of sarcasm, a printout of this article, and saying 'Ni' to them. The last method was discovered accidentally after a mutant grue encountered a knight of Ni in college on a rainy night long ago.

[edit] Features 6: Tanaka business school

The Tanaka business school is a building were IC's new economics and conning department resides. It consists of a large cylindrical building with 5 lecture theatres in it, an underground area with a few more lecture theatres, and a stunningly large empty space that has to be heated during the winter. The business school was set up in 2004 as a practical joke but quickly became a serious department of the college.

Interesting points about the Tanaka business school:

• The large cylindrical object is an inexhaustible source of fun and thinking as people try to find what it looks like. So far, 'giant tin can', 'massive solenoid', and 'oversized shower-gel bottle' have been alternative names given to it.
• The lecture theatres are named after the floor they are on, in order for the names to follow a logical naming system and be easily located. Thus there is a Lower ground LT, a ground LT, an upper ground LT, a 1st floor LT, a 2nd floor LT, and a 3rd floor LT. This logical naming came to replace the confusing 'Basement-Ground floor-Nth floor' approach, so unimaginatively used in other buildings.
• The enormous empty space has won IC Europe-wide architectural recognition: it has been graded Z by the European Commission in terms of energy efficiency, thus defining a new low in the efficiency ranking system of the EU.

[edit] Features 7: The Union

The Union is the anti-centre of all social activities at Imperial. The repulsive nature of the building as a radius of effect of several hundred metres depending on the time of year. The few who have fought their way into the building bring back reports of desolate interiors and building sites, along with a gaggle of over enthusiastic politicians. There is a small portion of the college population who are unaffected by the repulsion field. This group consists mainly of football and rugby players, coupled with a rash of biological science students. Another inexplicable phenomena seen in the building is continual destruction of public lavatory facilities - those who use the building are incapable of urinating without detaching a door from its mountings. The only other feature worth pointing is the distinct lack of females able to penetrate the building, those few souls who manage to enter are swarmed by a collection of sci-fi fanatics and chess players, often resulting in drowning, by zit puss. During Counterstrike all night events, these unlucky girls are mauled by a whole rugby team at the same time.

[edit] Features 8: The teaching

The teaching is an aspect of the college that is taken very seriously and is a major source of pride for IC. Every year it starts with some nice introductory lectures where leturers are talking about the fun of being a scientist and major research projects that good students will some time have the opportunity to be part of. 1st-years are almost invariably taken in but older students, who have been trained and tested in lecture theatres for 'resistance against lecturing' just like spies are trained in resistance against interrogation, are less gullible. Next, the lectures begin with definitions of and on various things, stage at which it feels like rowing gently down Hyde Park's Serpentine lake. This is the 1st phase.

After a period of gentle rowing and just about as everyone is about to fall asleep, lectures begin on new definitions and equation rearrangements and transforms which occupy on average 80% of the lecturers' time whilst the remaining 20% is left for explanation of what is actually going on. The generated confusion and mayhem creates panic amongst the students and always amuses that single jerk in the class who doesn't take the whole course so seriously but does reasonably well in it as well. At that stage the level of difficulty rises like a step function. It is even worse than an exponential. In an exponential, you run and run and run, until you realise that even though your legs are moving in the right direction you are actually sliding backwards, but with the step function it is like hitting a brick wall at full speed. This sense of painful collision lasts throughout the 2nd phase of teaching, from about the middle of the 1st term to the middle of the 2nd term.

At the 3rd stage, things get extremely complicated because people are too busy memorising equations and really understand nothing, but lectures keep going on as if nothing was going wrong. Mentioning is a very good international joke... everywhere except Imperial. At Imperial, it is a dreadful reality! Every day students are being bombarded with problem sheets and progress tests from all directions. Some of us have bought special camo face paint for the occasion, hoping to hide from mortar problem sheets and lecture-theatre-buster tests. Naturally every module follows the time distribution law according to which the workload given on that module is precisely calculated as to take up all the time available to students. Depending on the number of concurrently running modules the time required from students to cope with the work is anywhere between 6 and 10 times the one available. At that stage, the only way to describe the situation is like going to the train station and waiting for a train that you have already missed, hoping it comes back to get you... and you are in a war zone too!

In the end that stage comes where revision lectures begin. At that stage, everyone has been preparing for one single module, which most of the time is that one where the professor is one of the most brilliant researchers on campus so he naturally expects his bright IC students to get everything about quantum theory before one can say "skedadle". Of course in reality, it takes slightly longer to get all of that stuff than the time it takes to say "skedadle". The result is that during those revision lectures concerning that module it is impossible to get hold of the professor and ask questions and even if you do, you get answers where "and obviously" is used more often than spices in curry. During the other revision lectures on the other hand a deathly silence dominates the theatre as the professor asks whether anyone has any questions and hoping against hope awaits for a reply. At that point everybody knows that the lecturer thinks that this can only mean one of two thigs: either everyone has understood everything, or nobody has even bothered to so much as glance at the notes for quite some time... and it usually isn't the first option. This usually sends the omnipresent jerk of the class in bursts of clumsily smothered laughter.

After all this procedure most if not all students are seriously ill of information indigestion. Information indigestion being a serious condition described by a constant feeling that the brain has been force-fed information like a goose that is about to be turned into foie-gras has been force-fed with bread chippings, and the lingering wish that all that information is flushed from the brain as soon as possible. At that time the brain is in powerful pain and exam period comes like a big mug of laxative making its way toward some poor constipated bastard's mouth. In both cases the patient and the student know that what is coming is going to be a horrendous experience, but after that is over it is going to save them of the very unpleasant situation they put themselves in. The unlucky few that survive the exam meat-grinder usually return and stay for a total of 3 or (lion-hearted ones) 4 years.

[edit] External policy

Imperial college has been a member of the University of London federation whose main purpose was to smash Cambridge and Oxford for decades. However the mere fact that the only thing IC hates more than Cambridge and Oxford is the totality of its federate colleagues led to the beginning of the 6 month war, which was a civil war within the UL. After 6 months of brutal paper exchange between IC and the rest of the UL, a paper exchange that led to massive rivers of ink flowing from the battlegrounds of this unfortunate war in all directions, a peace treaty was proposed by the rector and accepted by the UL making IC independent effective in 2007.

IC had also tried to form an alliance with its arch rival UCL. The proposed alliance that was to bear the symbolic name: 'unholy alliance' never materialised however and the two warring college factions were fighting for different sides during the inky civil war that rocked the UL. Alliance actions however were also attempted in the past by IC. Specifically the acquisition of Charing Cross hospital, St. Mary hospital and other dysfunctional bits of the NHS were successfully incorporated into the college, collectively known as the Grue medical research department dedicated to the study of grues, their eating habits and specifically ways to make them give up eating human meat.

[edit] Research

IC is well known for its world class research. It played an important role in bringing about such innovations as the hipity-hippity-hippity-hop walking style (in fact a sketch in a Monty Pythons Flying Circus episode was dedicated to this breakthrough of the mid-70's), dragon ice-creams including family size ones (tough problem considering the size of an average family of dragons), needles for dragon acupuncture (later used as oil-drilling drivers for rigs in the Siberian permafrost), and some of the longest worms ever to have wandered on the surface of the planet.

Well known literary works include the best-sellers 'How to turn the neighbours pet grue into a vegetarian', 'Dragon pneumonology and its application in welding', '100 ways to walk + 1000 ways to walk your dog', 'Economics for hedgehogs', 'The endless excitement of worm physiology' and 'The big Uncyclopedia of worms and dragons'.

In addition, Imperial College's Misapplied Applied Computing department have made major advances in the area of Turing Power (see uses of Haskell). Many reckon this was a bad move.

[edit] Famous Alumni

• T.H. Huxley - Designer of the Huxley building.
• J.B. Priestley - Inventor of Oxygen.
• Brian May - Queen guitarist after whom the month of May is named.
• Steve Howey - Ex Newcastle and Man City defender.
• Princess Anne - Puts the "SS" in "Princess"
• Martin Zerbit
• Sir Richard "Rickie" Sykes - Part-time pole dancer
• Sir Cheesington Graterfield - Inventor of the cheese grater
• Hypnodog - The most hypnotising dog in the world. Last seen convincing Mark Shatwell he was a footballer.
• Paul Wong - Partial differentiation wizard.
• Ed Hughes - opera singing pole-dancer
• The Hoff - Ex Baywatch star and cross word setter for IC newspaper, Felix.
• Rory Condon - Champion arm-wrestler

[edit] Imperial College Facts

Imperial College is home to the densest population of geeks in Western China. This was proved last year by Paul Wong and his team of geeks using complicated partial differentiation.

Imperial college is a massive centre of congregation of ICSs

There is one Norwegian student at Imperial College.

Imperial College is the home of some of the ugliest women and men in modern academia. Classic examples include Troll Woman, Step Woman (the animal that drinks so much that adapted perfectly to sleeping on the steps), No Eyelids Girl, The infamous Southside bar Bag Lady (no amount of paper bags can disguise this woman's roughness), Fat German Pervert and everyone else in the RSM.

[edit] Imperial College School of Medicine

Imperial College School of Medicine is full of medick scum. Imperial College Medics take it upon themselves to crawl up their own assholes before saying anything at all to anyone not connected with their school.

For the entire duration of the Medicine course medics do absolutely nothing except true/false exams, talking to hypochondriacs at Charing Cross hospital and close up inspection of their own colons.

The main teaching hospital is Charing Cross, located in Hammersmith. The building is fugly, smelly and falling apart. Not even MRSA would want to be there. However it is famous for its successful sex change clinics. See you there xx

[edit] Imperial College Football Club

ICFC is by far the greatest team (well, club) the world has ever seen. The club is located at Harlington sports ground, a short 3,000 mile bus journey from Imperial College itself.

STDs play an important role in the football club, with cultured women such as Mrs Masters helping to spread various infections around amongst the players. This either is, or isn't, a fact. There is also rumoured to be a sexual predator known as the Cockfiend working its way around the club. Beware - many have entered her and come out broken men.

Recent results include (but are not limited to) IC 5th's 4 - IC 4th's 2.

Old boys from the club include: Psycho, Fat Basies Twix, Phillio Lansdowne, Shatters (takes it up the arse), Super Jan, Jon Dom, Dom "shags mingers" Booth, Mooknally, Turk Jai, Crazy Horse Henry, Oli Wright-Wright-Wright, T, G, Badger, the list could go on for years......