Science Humor: A Wide Selection

In summary: This is because the light is being pushed down by the water. The dark is occupying more space and is therefore heavier.
  • #281
You people have no sense of humor. I could not chuckle at just one.
 
Physics news on Phys.org
  • #282
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."
 
  • #284
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.
 
  • #285
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.
 
  • #286
:cry: I hit on about half of those!

I'm scared.
 
  • #287
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.
 
  • #288
- 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? :confused:

- 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.)
 
Last edited:
  • #289
And the award for geekiest reponse goes to...envelope please...BobG! :biggrin:

BobG, you're hysterical. :tongue:
 
  • #290
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. :uhh:
 
  • #291
What do you call the part-time leader of an orchestra?
... a semiconductor.
 
  • #292
And on that note, remember that old songwriters never die... they just decompose.
 
  • #293
yomamma said:
now that I'm using a different browser, I can see it. ;)

What browser allowed you to see it?
 
  • #294
Danger said:
And on that note, remember that old songwriters never die... they just decompose.

Mathematicians never die; they just lose some of their functions.
 
  • #295
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
 
Last edited:
  • #296
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.
 
  • #297
Mathematicians never die; they just lose some of their functions.
I lost all my functions quite awhile back.
 
  • #298
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."
 
  • #299
Found in a glossary of astrophysics definitions. :rofl:

Because. Here's a word best avoided in physics. :rofl: 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!'
 
  • #300
Here is one translated from swedish (it still works i think)

Q: Why can't philosophers derivate

A: They have no function
 
  • #301
Technological One-Upmanship
After digging to a depth of 1000 feet last year, Scottish scientists found traces of copper wire dating back 1000 years, and came to the conclusion that their ancestors already had a telephone network a thousand years ago.

Not to be outdone, in the weeks that followed, English scientists dug 2000 feet and headlines in the U.K. Papers read: "English scientists have found traces of 2000 year old optical fibre, and have concluded that our ancestors already had an advanced high-tech digital network a thousand years earlier than the Scots."

One week later, the Irish newspapers reported the following: "After digging as deep as 5000 feet, Irish scientists have found absolutely nothing. They have concluded that 5000 years ago, our ancestors were already using wireless technology."
 
  • #302
The Pizza Theorem

The volume of a pizza can be found by the following method. Let z equal the radius of the pizza and let [tex]\alpha[/tex] equal the thickness of the pizza. The volume can be found by multiplying the area of the top of the pizza by the thickness of the pizza. The area of the top of the pizza is equal to Pi times the radius squared (the radius times itself).

Or, the final equation:

[tex]V=Pi z z \alpha[/tex]
 
  • Like
Likes SpanishOmelette
  • #303
Back in the late sixties/ early seventies, after it was discovered that the outer planets would soon all be in the same general area of space at the same time - an event that happens once every 175 years, and what made the Voyager missions possible - the director of NASA declared: "The last time this happened Jefferson was President, and he blew it!"
 
Last edited:
  • #304
Hey, this really IS funny. Have you ever looked in on a class of freshman physics students taking a test on vectors and cross products?

All of the contortions remind me of interpretive dance.
 
  • #305
didnt read the entire thread but I ran a thread search and this one has not come up yet:


Pretty Little Polynomial and Curly Pi​
Once upon a time (1/t) pretty little Polly Nomial was strolling across a field of vectors when she came to the boundary of a singularly large matrix. Now Polly was convergent, and her mother had made it an absolute condition that she must never, ever enter such an array without her brackets on. Polly, however, who had changed her variables that morning and was feeling particularly badly behaved, ignored this condition on the basis that it was insufficient, and made her way in amongst the complex elements.

Rows and columns closed in on her from all sides. Tangents approached her surface, and she became tenser and tenser. Quite suddenly, two branches of a hyperbola touched her at a single point. She oscillated violently, became unstable, lost all sense of directrix, tripped over a square root that was protruding from the erf, and plunged headlong down a steep gradient. She was completely divergent by the time she reached the turning point. When she rounded off once more, she found herself inverted, apparently alone in a non-euclidean space.

She was being watched, however. That smooth operator, Curly Pi, was lurking inner product. As his eyes devoured her curvilinear coordinates, a singular expression crossed his face. He wondered, was she convergent? He decided to integrate improperly at once.

Hearing a common fraction behind her, Polly rotated and saw Curly Pi approaching with his lower series extended. She could see at once his degenerate conic and his dissipative terms, and knew he was irrational. "Arcsinh!" she gasped.

"Hey, what's your sine?" he asked. "What a symmetric set of asymptotes you have!"

"Stay away from me!" she protested. "I haven't got any brackets on!"

"Calm yourself, my dear!" said the smooth operator.. "Your fears are purely imaginary."

"i, i, ..." she thought, "Perhaps he's not normal, but homologous."

"What order are you?" the brute suddenly demanded.

"Seventeen," replied Polly.

Curly leered, "I suppose you've never been operated upon?"

"Of course not. I'm absolutely convergent!" Polly replied quite properly.

"Come on," said Curly: "Let's go to decimal place I know of, and I'll take you to the limit."

"Never!" gasped Polly..

"Abscissa!" he swore a violent oath. Coshing her over the coefficient with a log until she was powerless, Curly removed her discontinuities. He stared at her significant places, and began smoothing her points of inflection. Poor Polly Nomial! The algorithm method was now her only hope. She felt him approaching her asymptotic limit. Her convergence would soon be gone forever. There was no mercy; Curly was a heavy side operator. His radius squared itself and Polly's loci quivered. He integrated by parts. He integrated by partial fractions. After he cofactored, he performed Runge-Kutta on her. He even went all the way around and did a contour integration. Curly went on operating until he satisfied her hypotheses, then he exponentiated and became completely orthogonal.

When Polly got home that night, her mother noticed that she was no longer piecewise continuous, but had been truncated in several places. But it was too late to differentiate now. As the months went by, Polly's denominator increased monotonically. Finally, they took her to L'Hopital and generated a small but pathological function which left surds all over the place and drove Polly to deviation.

The moral of this tale is: "If you want to keep your expressions convergent, never allow them a single degree of freedom."

Now that's what I call getting your Mathematical Pundamentals right.

http://www.macs.hw.ac.uk/~pjbk/humour/polynomial.html
 
Last edited by a moderator:
  • #306
Not a science joke, but I like it:

Based on what you know about him in history books, what do you think Abraham Lincoln would be doing if he were alive today?
1. Writing his memoirs of the Civil War.
2. Advising the President.
3. Desperately clawing at the inside of his coffin.
-- David Letterman
 
  • #307
Again, not science...well, maybe psychology?

A husband walks into the bedroom holding two aspirin and a glass of water. His wife asks, "What's that for?"

"It's for your headache."

"I don't have a headache."

He replies, "Gotcha!"
 
  • Like
Likes CynicusRex
  • #308
Answer on a blonde's geometry test

------------------
 

Attachments

  • blonde-joke.jpg
    blonde-joke.jpg
    11.7 KB · Views: 480
  • Like
Likes SpanishOmelette
  • #309
That looks like one of my tests.
 
  • #310
Atomos said:
"Calm yourself, my dear!" said the smooth operator.. "Your fears are purely imaginary."

"i, i, ..." she thought, "Perhaps he's not normal, but homologous."

"What order are you?" the brute suddenly demanded.

"Seventeen," replied Polly.

Curly leered, "I suppose you've never been operated upon?"

"Of course not. I'm absolutely convergent!" Polly replied quite properly.

"Come on," said Curly: "Let's go to decimal place I know of, and I'll take you to the limit."

"Never!" gasped Polly..

"Abscissa!" he swore a violent oath. Coshing her over the coefficient with a log until she was powerless, Curly removed her discontinuities. He stared at her significant places, and began smoothing her points of inflection. Poor Polly Nomial! The algorithm method was now her only hope. She felt him approaching her asymptotic limit. Her convergence would soon be gone forever. There was no mercy; Curly was a heavy side operator. His radius squared itself and Polly's loci quivered. He integrated by parts. He integrated by partial fractions. After he cofactored, he performed Runge-Kutta on her. He even went all the way around and did a contour integration. Curly went on operating until he satisfied her hypotheses, then he exponentiated and became completely orthogonal.

When Polly got home that night, her mother noticed that she was no longer piecewise continuous, but had been truncated in several places. But it was too late to differentiate now. As the months went by, Polly's denominator increased monotonically. Finally, they took her to L'Hopital and generated a small but pathological function which left surds all over the place and drove Polly to deviation.

The moral of this tale is: "If you want to keep your expressions convergent, never allow them a single degree of freedom."
:rofl: But the poor little girl got raped. :bugeye: :cry:

If you put it on in code its just fine.
 
  • #311
topsquark said:
Again, not science...well, maybe psychology?

A husband walks into the bedroom holding two aspirin and a glass of water. His wife asks, "What's that for?"

"It's for your headache."

"I don't have a headache."

He replies, "Gotcha!"

That took way too long for me to get.
 
  • #312
very bad joke from my maths teacher

intergrate __1__ d cabin
cabin


edit. ok so that didn't work. must learn to use latex. the cabin should be under the 1.
 
  • #313
Alkatran said:
That took way too long for me to get.

I still don't get that joke.
 
  • #314
eax said:
I still don't get that joke.
someone explain
 
  • #315
physicsuser said:
someone explain


Explain what? The joke or why eax doesn`t 'get it' ??!?
 

Similar threads

Replies
2
Views
1K
  • General Discussion
Replies
1
Views
231
  • General Discussion
Replies
1
Views
1K
  • General Discussion
Replies
26
Views
1K
  • General Discussion
Replies
1
Views
1K
  • General Discussion
Replies
7
Views
655
  • New Member Introductions
Replies
1
Views
55
  • General Discussion
Replies
1
Views
839
  • General Discussion
Replies
1
Views
4K
Replies
5
Views
1K
Back
Top