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So You Think Physics is Funny?
mzs writes "I just found this article in PhysicsWorld by Robert P. Crease detailing some of the 'better' physics jokes that readers sent him in response to an earlier article. Read about why the elements of magnetic flux are hard to understand or about the sexual adventures of Alice and Bob in a bar. Let's use the comments for this article to list more jokes from our technical professions which are funny but not necessarily to those outside of the field. I will close with this gem from the article: 'What's new?' 'E over h.'"
The best physics humour ever
Points of View: December 2003
Robert P Crease selects the funniest jokes about physics and physicists from his readers' poll
Three months ago I asked readers of Physics World to contribute samples of new physics jokes, fresh forms of physics wit, or cases of "found humour" in physics (see "So you think physics is funny?"). I received about 200 replies, including jokes in several languages, stories, Photoshop creations, video clips and links to science cartoon databases.
I was also contacted by a representative of BBC Radio Five Live, who claimed to be interested in having me talk about physics humour late one night. My subsequent negative experience - I hope nobody was awake to hear it - illustrates an important lesson about science humour.
Outsiders don't get it
When I was first hooked up, the show's host Dotun Adebayo was finishing a segment on dirty bombs, treating the expert being interviewed with deference and respect. When that concluded, he said something like: "And now for something completely different!" That should have alerted me that I was bring set up.
Adebayo retold some jokes from my column in Physics World - accompanied by a conspicuously too-loud laugh track - then asked me to explain the jokes. Stupidly, I complied. Too late, it dawned on me that while some aspects of science, such as safety and health, are sacred to outsiders, other parts are simply targets for ridicule. Professional humour is one. The point of the programme was to laugh, not at jokes, but at physicists for their supposedly mechanical and cerebral wit.
The lesson was that I should have resisted. Being jousted, I should have jousted back - perhaps with the aid of a simple jest. "I can't explain these jokes to you, Dotun, they're only for smart people!" I should have said. "But try this one: did you hear about the restaurant NASA is starting on the Moon? Great food, no atmosphere! Still with me, Dotun? Shall I slow down?" (Thanks to Larry Bays from the Los Alamos National Laboratory for that joke.)
My Five Live experience reminded me of two other cases of comedians appropriating professional humour. One is a recent New Yorker article in which Woody Allen couches everyday anxiety-provoking experiences (being late for work, trying to seduce someone) in language borrowed from physics. A typical sentence runs: "I could feel my coupling constant invade her weak field as I pressed my lips to her wet neutrinos." Allen lumbers across a whole page in this meant-to-be-cute vein. Don't abandon that film career, Woody.
The other comedian to have tackled professional humour is Steve Martin, who tells his audience that he has worked up a joke about wrenches because a convention of plumbers is in town that night. The punchline, when it eventually comes, is: "It says sprocket, not socket!" When the supposedly expected guffaws fail to materialize, Martin feigns puzzlement. "Were those plumbers supposed to be here this show?" he asks. Now that brings laughs.
These episodes illustrate a mixture of ways in which outsiders can appropriate the technical vocabulary of a profession for humorous purposes. Allen uses the poetic suggestiveness of technical terms (coupling, weak field and so on) for good-natured fun; his sentences do not make sense if you are an insider and go only by the words. Martin makes fun out of our not being insiders and not understanding the words. Radio Five Live made fun of the insiders themselves: the fact that they do understand the words.
Jests
Humour, anthropologists tell us, is a flexible tool for managing the social environment. It can be used to draw people in by sharing, to keep people away by intimidating, to build charisma, to impress, to entertain, to relieve tension, to test and challenge oneself and others. But it is an especially useful tool in science, and particularly physics, precisely because it engages, fosters and celebrates the same values that the field itself depends on - namely cleverness, play and
Ah, crap. It was already in the article. I thought this was one case where posting without reading the article might not make me look like an idiot...
Trouble making decisions? Just flip for it.
A policeman pulls Werner Heisenberg over.
"Do you know how fast you were going?" the policeman asks.
"No, but I know exactly where I was!" replies Heisenberg.
Greg
(Inside a nuclear plant)
Aaaarrrggh! Run! The canary has mutated!
This legend, the truth of which is not necessarily related to
its value, concerns a question in a physics degree exam at the
University of Copenhagen: "Describe how to determine the height
of a skyscraper with a barometer."
One student replied: "Tie a long piece of string to the neck
of the barometer, then lower the barometer from the roof of the
skyscraper to the ground. The length of the string plus the
length of the barometer will equal the height of the building."
This highly original answer so incensed the examiner that the
student was failed immediately.
He appealed on the grounds that his answer was indisputably
correct, and the university appointed an independent arbiter
to decide the case. The arbiter judged that the answer was
indeed correct, but did not display any noticeable knowledge
of physics.
To resolve the problem it was decided to call the student in
and allow him six minutes in which to provide a verbal answer
which showed at least a minimal familiarity with the basic
principles of physics.
For five minutes the student sat in silence, forehead creased
in thought. The arbiter reminded him that time was running
out, to which the student replied that he had several extremely
relevant answers, but couldn't make up his mind which to use.
On being advised to hurry up the student replied as follows:
"Firstly, you could take the barometer up to the roof of the
skyscraper, drop it over the edge, and measure the time it
takes to reach the ground. The height of the building can then
be worked out from the formula H = 0.5g x t squared. But bad
luck on the barometer.
"Or if the sun is shining you could measure the height of the
barometer, then set it on end and measure the length of its
shadow. Then you measure the length of the skyscraper's shadow,
and thereafter it is simple matter of proportional arithmetic
to work out the height of the skyscraper.
"But if you wanted to be highly scientific about it, you could
tie a short piece of string to the barometer and swing it like
a pendulum, first at ground level and then on the roof of the
skyscraper. The height is worked out by the difference in the
gravitational restoring force T = 2 pi sq root(l / g).
"Or if the skyscraper has an outside emergency staircase, it
would be easier to walk up it and mark off the height of the
skyscraper in barometer lengths, then add them up.
"If you merely wanted to be boring and orthodox about it, of
course, you could use the barometer to measure the air pres-
sure on the roof of the skyscraper and on the ground, and
convert the difference in millibars into feet to give the
height of the building.
"But since we are constantly being exhorted to exercise inde-
pendence of mind and apply scientific methods, undoubtedly
the best way would be to knock on the janitor's door and say
to him 'If you would like a nice new barometer, I will give
you this one if you tell me the height of this building'."
The student was Niels Bohr, the only Dane to win the Nobel
prize for Physics.
--
Mac OS X--Unix without the assholes^Whassles.
An engineer, a physicist and a mathematician live on the same block one night, a fire starts in each of their bedrooms. The engineer wakes up, does some quick calculations on how much water is needed to put out the fire, doubles the amount just to make sure, tosses the water on the fire, puts it out and goes to bed. The physicist does some pretty good calculations, figures out the exact amount of water necessary, puts out the fire and goes to bed. The mathematician sees the fire, sits down, uses a bunch of Fourier series and figures out exactly how much water it takes to put out the fire. Once he knows the problem can be solved, he goes back to bed.