Science Humor: A Wide Selection

[Diane_]

A group of engineering students and a group of mathematics students were on the same train heading towards a conference. Each of the mathematicians had his own ticket, while the engineers had just one for all of them. The mathematicians, of course, made fun of the stupid engineers, most of whom would be thrown off the train.

One of the engineers kept watch at the end of the compartment. When he called out that the conductor was coming, all of the engineers crowded into the bathroom. As the conductor came by, he knocked on the door and called out "Ticket, please." A single ticket came under the bathroom door. The conductor took it and proceeded to collect the tickets from the mathematicians. After the conductor left, the engineers left the bathroom and took their seats.

The mathematicians were quite impressed.

On the way back from the conference, the mathematicians purchased only a single ticket. They were quite amused by the engineers, who hadn't bothered to do even that much. One engineer and one mathematician took up watch and notified the others when the conductor was coming. The mathematicians crowded into one bathroom and the engineers into another. Just before the conductor arrived, one engineer crept out of their bathroom, knocked on the door of the other bathroom and said "Ticket, please."

 

[Diane_]

OK - and since I'm a mathematician and need to get a little back:

A mathematician, a physicist and an engineer are presented with the proposition that all odd numbers are prime and asked to verify or refute it.

The mathematician starts: Let's see, one is prime, three is prime, five is prime, seven is prime, nine... Nine's not prime. The proposition is obviously false.

The physicist tries it next: Let's see, one is prime, three is prime, five is prime, seven is prime, nine... Well, nine's not prime, but that could be experimental error. Let's go on. Eleven is prime, thirteen is prime - hmm. That's an awful lot of data. The proposition is probably true.

Then the engineer tries it: Let's see, one is prime, three is prime, five is prime, seven is prime, nine is prime, eleven is prime...

 

[JamesU]

it's quite funny ^_^
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╘╛　　╘╛　　╚─╛╘╰═╯╘╛╘╜╚─═╛

I don't get it

 

[scott1]

This insn't really a joke but it's my favorit Einstein quote
"The Most confussing thing in the world is Income taxes"-Albert Einstein
I guess the guy how came up with the General theory of realtivty had nothing elese confussed about

 

[Cosmo16]

I don't get it

lets just say that we can't explain it on this site.

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

the proposition that all odd numbers are prime.

Here are a few more.

The liberal: Don't say 'odd', say 'even challenged'. We feel that all numbers are equally prime.

The optimist: 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 11 is prime. Yes, all the odd numbers are prime.

The bigot: 3 is prime. Yes, all the odd numbers are prime.

The computer programmer: 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 7 is prime, 7 is prime, 7 is prime, ...

The Zen buddhist: 4 is not prime, 6 is not prime, 8 is not prime, 10 is not prime. Yes, all the odd numbers are prime.

The theologian: Yes, all the odd numbers are prime.

 

[tribdog]

the conservative: one is mine three is mine five is mine, yes all the primes are mine
the President: one is prime, two is company three is a crowd, four he's a jolly good fellow. yes I like pudding.

 

[tribdog]

Al-Queda: three is prime, two is prime, one is prime, boom
Foghorn Leghorn: one, Ah say one, one is pri..are you listning to me boy, I say one is prime

 

[Reshma]

What would a frustrated Physics student say?
A: I wish Newton had sat under a coconut tree instead of an Apple tree.

 

[JamesU]

lets just say that we can't explain it on this site.

now that I'm using a different browser, I can see it. ;)

 

[minase]

You people have no sense of humor. I could not chuckle at just one.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

A student in a very large auditorium-class didn't stop working on his exam when the professor called "time". When he went up to turn it in, the professor said he needen't bother, he'd already failed. The student looked at the large stack of exams on the desk and asked angrily and defiantly, "Do you know who I am?" The professor replied that he didn't. The student stuck his exam in the middle of the stack and said, "Good."

 

[___]

jokes with einstein.


http://pointystick.com/funnyflash.php?id=266&page=0

 

[Plastic Photon]

Maybe this is more humour, or just a question with an interesting answer...

Q: How many stars are there in the universe?
A: One mole.

 

[Lisa!]

Are you an Engineer?
If these remind you of yourself, it's a good bet you are an engineer.

- At Christmas, it goes without saying that you will be the one to find the burnt-out bulb in the string.

- In college you thought Spring Break was a metal fatigue failure.

- The salespeople at Circuit City can't answer any of your questions.

- You are at an air show and know how fast the skydivers are falling.

- You bought your wife a new CD ROM for her birthday.

- You can quote scenes from any Monty Python movie.

- You can't write unless the paper has both horizontal and vertical lines.

- You comment to your wife that her straight hair is nice and parallel.

- You forgot to get a haircut ... for 6 months.

- You have Dilbert comics displayed anywhere in your work area.

- You have ever saved the power cord from a broken appliance.

- You have more friends on the Internet than in real life.

- You have used coat hangers and duct tape for something other than hanging coats and taping ducts.

- You know what http:// actually stands for.

- You own one or more white short-sleeve dress shirts.

- You see a good design and still have to change it.

- You still own a slide rule and you know how to work it.

- You wear black socks with white tennis shoes (or vice versa).

- You're in the back seat of your car, she's looking wistfully at the moon, and you're trying to locate a geosynchronous satellite.

- You know what the geosynchronous satellite's function is.

- Your laptop computer costs more than your car.

- You've already calculated how much you make per second.

- You've ever tried to repair a $5 radio.

 

[Danger]

I hit on about half of those!

I'm scared.

 

[tribdog]

These ones? They're my matches.
- You can quote scenes from any Monty Python movie.
- You forgot to get a haircut ... for 6 months.
- You have ever saved the power cord from a broken appliance.
- You have more friends on the Internet than in real life.
- You have used coat hangers and duct tape for something other than hanging coats and taping ducts.
- You know what http:// actually stands for.
- You see a good design and still have to change it.
- You know what the geosynchronous satellite's function is.
- Your laptop computer costs more than your car.
- You've already calculated how much you make per second.
- You've ever tried to repair a $5 radio.

 

[BobG]

- At Christmas, it goes without saying that you will be the one to find the burnt-out bulb in the string.
- You are at an air show and know how fast the skydivers are falling.
- You have more friends on the Internet than in real life.
- You have used coat hangers and duct tape for something other than hanging coats and taping ducts.
- You know what http:// actually stands for.
- You know what the geosynchronous satellite's function is.

Well, these go without saying. Who wouldn't these apply to?

- You wear black socks with white tennis shoes (or vice versa).

What's wrong with white socks and black tennis shoes?

- You have ever saved the power cord from a broken appliance.

- You've ever tried to repair a $5 radio.

Not only do these apply, but I still have a Commodore 64 in the garage that's awaiting repairs to the disk drive. (I'm pretty bad at procrastination sometimes).

- You're in the back seat of your car, she's looking wistfully at the moon, and you're trying to locate a geosynchronous satellite.

There's a real problem with this scenario. You would have to have memorized every star along the zodiac constellations (including the stars in between that don't belong to any of the zodiac constellations) to locate a geosynchronous satellite with the naked eye (it would be the star that doesn't belong). The normal way to locate a geosynchronous satellite is to attach a camera with a prolonged exposure to a telescope. The streaks are stars - the stars that appear stationary are geosynchronous satellites. Hmmm. Actually, if you memorized just one portion of the sky while you were looking at it, after a while you probably would notice that one of the stars in the 'constellation' you memorized has changed places. It would work better on a night with no moon.

- You still own a slide rule and you know how to work it.

Well, of course I know how to use a slide rule - I own over a dozen of them!

Good ones, too. I have the first slide rule I ever used - my dad's Post Versalog made of Hemmi bamboo; I have my trusty 6" pocket Pickett (a portion of which makes up my avatar); my Albert Nestler 23R - the model preferred by Albert Einstein and Werner Von Braun; my Post 1491 Chemists slide rule with its various temperature and pressure scales, plus 'constants' for the atomic mass of common elements and substances; my Faber Castell 83N Novo Duplex slide rule (complete with instructions, but they're written in German). I even have a slide rule for computing look angles for various geosynchronous communications satellites! (Okay, so I can locate a few geosynchronous satellites in the night sky, but not very many.)

 

[Evo]

And the award for geekiest reponse goes to...envelope please...BobG!

BobG, you're hysterical.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Not really a joke but a bit funny... I was about to throw away an old computer when I realized that the hard drive hadn't been destroyed. But the joke is on me: Where is the hard drive? ...oh yes, this one was made before PCs had hard drives.

 

[FeynmanMH42]

What do you call the part-time leader of an orchestra?
... a semiconductor.

 

[Danger]

And on that note, remember that old songwriters never die... they just decompose.

 

[rocketboy]

now that I'm using a different browser, I can see it. ;)

What browser allowed you to see it?

 

[Treadstone 71]

And on that note, remember that old songwriters never die... they just decompose.

Mathematicians never die; they just lose some of their functions.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

On March 24, 1993, Carolyn Shoemaker discovered what look like a smashed comet on a photograph. And it was a comet. Not long after when Eugene Shoemaker announced that this newly discovered comet was going to impact Jupiter
http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/sl9/
- a spectacular and fortuitous event that was dubbed the opportunity of a lifetime for astonomers, an event that would help to reshape our understanding of the potential threat to humanity posed by comets - Carolyn responded, "not my comet!"

According to Eugene Shoemaker

 

[DaveC426913]

from my novel

From Robert J. Sawyer's latest book: Mindscan. (not that he takes credit for the jokes or anything...)

A cop pulls over Werner Heisenberg on the freeway. The cop says: "Mister, do you know how fast you were going?" Heisenberg responds: "No. But I know where I am!"


A passenger on a train walks up to Einstein and says "Excuse me sir, but does New York stop at this train?"


Rene Descartes walks into a bar and orders a drink. As he finishes it, the bartender asks "Say, Rene, would you like another?" Rene says "I think not." - and disappears.

 

[Mk]

Mathematicians never die; they just lose some of their functions.

I lost all my functions quite awhile back.

 

[jhe1984]

This one's from my science textbook:

A neutron walked into a bar and asked the bartender how much for a drink.

The bartender replied, "For you, no charge."

 

[Astronuc]

Found in a glossary of astrophysics definitions.

Because. Here's a word best avoided in physics. Whenever it appears one can be almost certain that it's a filler word in a sentence which says nothing worth saying, or a word used when one can't think of a good or specific reason. While the use of the word because as a link in a chain of logical steps is benign, one should still replace it with words more specifically indicative of the type of link which is meant. See: why.

Illustrative fable: The seeker after truth sought wisdom from a Guru who lived as a hermit on top of a Himalayan mountain. After a long and arduous climb to the mountain-top the seeker was granted an audience. Sitting at the feet of the great Guru, the seeker humbly said: 'Please, answer for me the eternal question: Why?' The Guru raised his eyes to the sky, meditated for a bit, then looked the seeker straight in the eye and answered, with an air of sagacious profundity, 'Because!'

 

[DavidK]

Here is one translated from swedish (it still works i think)

Q: Why can't philosophers derivate

A: They have no function