Science Jokes

Smurf

Right. I see it now. Not laughing but at least it makes sense.
=p

Ivan Seeking

The physicists and engineers at MIT faced off in a football game.

It was nearing the end of the 4th quarter and no one had scored. When a local factory whistle blew, the physicists assumed this was the game whistle; that the length of the game was only approximate, and in spite of the clock, the game was over. They left the field. The engineers executed the next seven plays perfectly but still had to settle with a field goal to win.

humanino

A physicist is walking in the street, hungry. He sees a bakery sign in a window, so gets in the shop, owned by a mathematician and asks for bread. The mathematician replies : "But we just sell signs"

I think it was from Zee's Nutshell

Gokul43201

Every now and then, I use vi.

Don't laugh !!! That wasn't a joke !

humanino

I use only vi. No shame. I also use pine. At least I know what I'm doing

Argentum Vulpes

The U.S. standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. That is an exceptionally odd number.

Now, why was that gauge used? Because that's the way they built them in England, and the U.S. Railroads were built by English expatriates.

Why did the English build them that way? Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that's the gauge they used.

Why did "they" use that gauge then? Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing.

So why did the wagons have that particular odd spacing? Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break on some of the old, long distance roads in England, because that's the spacing of the wheel ruts.

So, who built those old rutted roads? The first long distance roads in Europe (and England) were built by Imperial Rome for their legions. The roads have been used ever since.

And the ruts in the roads? The ruts in the roads, which everyone had to match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels, were first formed by Roman war chariots. Since the chariots were made for (or by) Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing.

The U.S. standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches derives from the original specification for an Imperial Roman war chariot. Specifications and bureaucracies live forever. So, the next time you are handed a specification and wonder what horse's a** came up with it, you may be exactly right, because the Imperial Roman war chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the back end of two war horses. Thus we have the answer to the original question.

Now the twist to the story... When we see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, there are two booster rockets attached to the side of the main fuel tank. These are Solid Rocket Boosters or SRBs. The SRBs are made by Thiokol at their factory in Utah. The engineers who designed the SRBs might have preferred to make them a bit fatter, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site. The railroad line from the factory had to run through a tunnel in the mountains. The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track is about as wide as two horses' behinds. So, the major design feature of what is arguably the world's most advanced transportation system was determined over two thousand years ago by the width of a horse's a**!!!

Don't you just love engineering?

Argentum Vulpes

You forgot one
Engineer- the glass is two time its over the necessary design parameters

Ivan Seeking

In physics we learn that a horse is approximately a sphere.

Gokul43201

Cows too...according to the joke that ends with the physicist solving the low milk-yield problem saying : "Assume all cows are spherical..."

physicsuser

Fredrik

About 7 years ago, David Letterman invited a few people to his show, to tell jokes that would only be understood by a very small number of people. I still remember the mathematician's joke, because I actually understood how bad it was:

Professor: Can you give me an example of a compact topological space?
Student: The real numbers.
(Silence)
Professor: With what topology?

omin

Here's one I heard from Steven Wright:

In the middle of a job interview, I pulled out a book and started reading. The guy interviewing me said, "What are you doing?" I said, "Can I ask you a question?" He said yes. "If you're traveling at the speed of light in your car through space and you turned on you headlights, would they work?" He said, "I don't know". I said, I don't want to work for you and walked out.

Flying Penguin

This is not true (unless that's the joke?).

Evo

That's the joke, unfortunately a lot of people believed the information about the rail spacing and now this misinformation is posted all over the internet as fact. There is a bit of truth to the rockets having to fit through the tunnel though.

^_^

I'm new so be nice.

I don't know if you've heard this before but...

A cave boy lived with his family in their cave next to the Hamilton family. Every day the cave boy would ride to school with the Hamilton boy until one day he came home and his mother said, "Son, if you commute with a Hamiltonian you're never going to evolve."

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

poolwin2001

I made this one up today while having lunch( I am vegetarian)

Q:Why did Dracula go to the circus?




A:Because,he wanted to get to the juggler!(jugular)?

lucifer

more of a math joke and most people've already heard it. anyways, here goes:

At New York's Kennedy International Airport today, an individual, later discovered to be a public school teacher, was arrested trying to board a flight while in possession of a ruler, a protractor, a setsquare, a slide rule, and a calculator.

Attorney General John Ashcroft believes the man is a member of the notorious Al-gebra movement. He is being charged with carrying weapons of math instruction.

"Al-gebra is a very fearsome cult, indeed," Ashcroft said. "They desire average solutions by means and extremes, and sometimes go off on a tangent in a search of absolute value. They consist of quite shadowy figures, with names like "X" and "Y ", and, although they are frequently referred to as "unknowns", we know they really belong to a common denominator and are part of the axis of medieval with coordinates in every country. As the great Greek philanderer Isosceles used to say, "there are 3 sides to every triangle."

When asked to comment on the arrest, President Bush said, "If God had wanted us to have weapons of math instruction, He would have given us more fingers and toes".