Message to the Moon About 1966 or so, a NASA team doing work for the Apollo moon mission took the astronauts near Tuba City where the terrain of the Navajo Reservation looks very much like the Lunar surface. Along with all the trucks and large vehicles, there were two large figures dressed in full Lunar spacesuits. Nearby a Navajo sheep herder and his son were watching the strange creatures walk about, occasionally being tended by personnel. The two Navajo people were noticed and approached by the NASA personnel. Since the man did not know English, his son asked for him what the strange creatures were and the NASA people told them that they are just men that are getting ready to go to the moon. The man became very excited and asked if he could send a message to the moon with the astronauts. The NASA personnel thought this was a great idea so they rustled up a tape recorder. After the man gave them his message, they asked his son to translate. His son would not. Later, they tried a few more people on the reservation to translate and every person they asked would chuckle and then refuse to translate. Finally, with cash in hand, someone translated the message, "Watch out for these guys, they come to take your land." Source: http://www.jamesoberg.com/humor.html
My wife and I attended a lecture by test pilot Chuck Yeager - who first broke the speed of sound in the Bell X-1. http://www.chuckyeager.org/htm_docs/x1.shtml Yeager's personal photos of this plane show a distinct bump on one side of the nose of this otherwise sleek aircraft. Back in the heyday of these activities, Yeager enjoyed telling people about the complex design features that underlie of this mysterious 6 inch deformation in the skin of the craft. He readily admits to really hamming this up just for fun. He would allude to the complex aerodynamics of shock waves and such - real big league science. In fact, according to Yeager, as the plane was being built, one of the last installations involved cables that had to be routed to the nose of the plane. No room was left for this cable run so the metal in the skin was pounded out to make room; so these cables to be strung around a metal beam. A truly complex design feature!
RE The mother is 21 years older than the child. In 6 years, the mother will be 5 times as old as the child. Question: Where's the father? answer: -9 months . . . think about it
The Dark Sucker Theory For years, it has been believed that electric bulbs emit light, but recent information has proved otherwise. Electric bulbs don't emit light; they suck dark. Thus, we call these bulbs Dark Suckers. The Dark Sucker Theory and the existence of dark suckers prove that dark has mass and is heavier than light. First, the basis of the Dark Sucker Theory is that electric bulbs suck dark. For example, take the Dark Sucker in the room you are in. There is much less dark right next to it than there is elsewhere. The larger the Dark Sucker, the greater its capacity to suck dark. Dark Suckers in the parking lot have a much greater capacity to suck dark than the ones in this room. So with all things, Dark Suckers don't last forever. Once they are full of dark, they can no longer suck. This is proven by the dark spot on a full Dark Sucker. A candle is a primitive Dark Sucker. A new candle has a white wick. You can see that after the first use, the wick turns black, representing all the dark that has been sucked into it. If you put a pencil next to the wick of an operating candle, it will turn black. This is because it got in the way of the dark flowing into the candle. One of the disadvantages of these primitive Dark Suckers is their limited range. There are also portable Dark Suckers. In these, the bulbs can't handle all the dark by themselves and must be aided by a Dark Storage Unit. When the Dark Storage Unit is full, it must be either emptied or replaced before the portable Dark Sucker can operate again. Dark has mass. When dark goes into a Dark Sucker, friction from the mass generates heat. Thus, it is not wise to touch an operating Dark Sucker. Candles present a special problem as the mass must travel into a solid wick instead of through clear glass. This generates a great amount of heat and therefore it's not wise to touch an operating candle. Also, dark is heavier than light. If you were to swim just below the surface of the lake, you would see a lot of light. If you were to slowly swim deeper and deeper, you would notice it getting darker and darker. When you get really deep, you would be in total darkness. This is because the heavier dark sinks to the bottom of the lake and the lighter light floats at the top. The is why it is called light. Finally, we must prove that dark is faster than light. If you were to stand in a lit room in front of a closed, dark closet, and slowly opened the closet door, you would see the light slowly enter the closet. But since dark is so fast, you would not be able to see the dark leave the closet. Next time you see an electric bulb, remember that it is a Dark Sucker. Source: The Dark Sucker Theory page
Hilarious! The Dark Sucker! [too bad my flashlight that operates on Farady's Principle disproves it, because I liked that theory! *wipes tears*)
Physics Saves Lives As part of the standard curriculum in a pre-med college, the students had to take a difficult class in physics. One day, the professor was discussing a particularly complicated concept. Part way through the class, a student rudely interrupted to ask, "Why do we have to learn this stuff?" "To save lives," the professor responded quickly and continued the lecture. A few minutes later, the same student spoke up again. "So how does physics save lives?" he persisted. "It usually keeps idiots like you out of medical school," replied the professor.
:) very funny, probably a true concept too :) Don't most med schools start off their junior year with anatomy classes = cutting in corpses, to filter the ones who really aren't up to it?
New Element Discovered The heaviest element known to science was recently discovered by University physicists here. The element, tentatively named administratium (Ad), has no protons or electrons, which means that it has atomic number 0 and falls outside the natural patterns exhibited by other elements. However, it does have 1 neutron, 125 assistants to the neutron, 75 vice neutrons and 111 assistants to the vice neutrons. This gives it an atomic mass of 312. The 312 particles are held together by a force involving the continuous exchange of meson-like particles called "memos". Because it has no protons or electrons, administratium is inert. Nonetheless, it can be detected chemically, in that it seems to impede every reaction in which it is present. According to one of the discoverers, even a small amount of administratium made one reaction which normally lasts less than a second take more than four days. Administratium has a half-life of approximately three years. It does not actually decay. Instead, it undergoes a reorganization in which a vice neutron, assistants to the vice neutron and certain assistants to the neutron exchange places. Some studies have indicated that its mass actually increases after each reorganization, although this is yet to be explained. Another phenomenon which has been observed, as expected from the mechanics of minute particles, is that the more one tries to pin down the positions of vice neutrons within the structure of administratium, the more uncertain those positions become. Within a short time after the discovery was announced, the existence of the element was confirmed in laboratories around the world. In addition, a team at the University of Utah told a press conference they had been able to create administratium in fusion experiments conducted at ordinary room temperature. Using highly sophisticated probability detectors, the team had monitored a stream of memos from a FAX-mounted device. Dr. May B. No and her associate, Dr. May B. Yes, said the details of their experiment were being kept confidential, pending further development of the data. But, they claimed, there were definitely more memos that came out of the device than went in.
After that last one it is open season. See if you can find one worse then this: To celebrate Halloween, all the math teachers and professors got together for a big costume party. Each dressed up as their favorite math function. One particularly mean and eccentric math professor dressed up as the derivative. He ran up to the teacher dressed as cos(x) and yelled "I derive you!" The teacher tore off his costume and scurried off looking for a -sin(x) costume. The prof ran up to another teacher who was dressed as 4x^5 and yelled "I derive you!" The teacher tore off his costume and went scurrying off, looking for a 20x^4 costume. The prof ran up to a 3rd teacher and screamed "I derive you!" The teacher just stood there with his arms crossed. "Didn't you hear me?! I DERIVE YOU!" he shouted. Again, the teacher stood there, but with a smug expression on his face. "I derive you! I derive you! I derive you!" the professor shouted while jumping up and down. The teacher looked at him and said "derive me all you want. I'm e^x."
How to tell the root subject of a science fair project If it stinks; Biology If it evacutes the building; Chemistry It it wasn't finished; Engineering If it doesn't work; Physics.
A sociology teacher was given a class to teach Math to in a junior school ... "Now children", she said, "Write down how 7 must feel having 4 taken away from it......."
The cartoonist Sydney Harris can tickle a funnybone every now and then. http://www.sciencecartoonsplus.com/gallery.htm
Here is a story, it's not a joke... i'd hate to be this person! ----------------------------------------------------------- THINK BEFORE YOU SPEAK We've all heard the phrase "you learn something new everyday." Well, here's today's lesson: Think before you speak!! This actually happened at Harvard University in October last year. In biology class, the professor was discussing the high glucose levels found in semen. A female freshman raised her hand and asked, "If I understand you, you're saying there is a lot of glucose, as in sugar, in semen?" "That's correct," responded the professor, going on to add statistical info. Raising her hand again, the girl asked, "Then why doesn't it taste sweet?" After a stunned silence, the class burst out laughing, the poor girl's face turned bright red, and as she realised exactly what she had inadvertently said (or rather implied), she picked up her books without a word and walked out of class, never to return. However as she was going out the door, the Prof's reply was classic. Totally straight-faced he answered her question: "It doesn't taste sweet because the taste buds for sweetness are on the tip of your tongue and not the back of your throat." ---------------------------------------------------------------- lol.
Phillip Morrison http://web.mit.edu/physics/facultyandstaff/faculty/philip_morrison.html tells of an experience that he had while working on the Manhattan Project. He [perhaps someone else...but Morrison was there, I heard this many years ago from Morrison] carried the U-235 core of the bomb out of the lab for transport to the detonation site. He dropped it. When he did, he panicked and started to run.