Mad Scientist
We had to hold a thermometer in water in chemistry class. It was only a 20-minute experiment, but your arms get tired after a couple of minutes, and you can’t let the thermometer touch the bottom of the pan, or it won’t get an accurate reading. So instead of sucking it up and just holding the thermometer, my lab partner built a contraption out of lab books and paperclips to somehow hold the thermometer in the water without it touching the bottom.
It was the stupidest looking thing you would ever see in a lab class. At one point during our experiment, our professor walked over and said something that really stuck with me: “If it looks stupid, sounds stupid, but it works, then it isn’t stupid.” Of course, my lab partner and I joked that he wasn’t talking about the contraption but the intellect of my lab partner.