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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.'"
Just not 'ha, ha' funny.
Q: What's purple and commutes?
A: An Abelian grape.
Wanted Dead or Alive.
Every Super Villan uses Linux.
Protons have mass? I didn't even know they were Catholic!
Q: What did the webserver say to Slashdot?
A: HRRRRRNNNnnnnnnghhhh......
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
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
Perhaps it's sad, but this is seriously the only joke I've ever made up in my life.
Q: How many quanta does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A: One and a half.
Physics can be very humorous, but only to those who actually understand the area that the joke is coming from.
Just like in various other occult groups (such as RPGers), some things they find very hilarious indeed can make little to no sense to a normal individual.
(PS, I am in no way trying to insult physicists, gamers or any other group. I am all of the above myself.)
So there was an argument over what type of engineer God was, to have created man. Some suggested Electrical Engineer, given the complex neural network, others suggested Mechanical Engineer, given the amazing mechanics of the body. It was finally realized that he was a Civil Engineer, as only a Civ. E. would put an waste management facility in a recreational area.
:)
Another...
Q: What's the difference between civil engineers and mechanical engineers?
A: Mechanical engineers build weapons, civil engineers build...targets
-JT
"Conserve Energy, commute with an Hamiltonian!"
if you get, you are a pretty geeky physics nerd.
Google cache to the rescue!
My favorite was the joke about the physics exam in which a young Neils Bohr goes through all the different ways to measure the height of a building using a pen.
Unfortunately I can't remember enough to do it justice... Anyone? I'm sure its good for a +1 Funny.
Paizurishitetai desu ka?
Q:Why did the universe get destroyed?
A:Some strings weren't null terminated.
The law of excluded middle : Either I'm foo or I'm foobar
[red sign posted on my professors door]
If this sign looks blue...SLOW DOWN
---- El diablo esta en mis pantalones! Mire, mire!
Q: What do you call a Polak in a F15?
A: A simple pole in a complex plane.
<ba dum ching>
The ultimate goal of science is to unify all forces of nature to a single law that can be silk-screened onto a T-shirt.
If this sticker is blue, you're going too fast.
The Army reading list
Defies the notion that nobody reads the articles before posting, doesn't it?
A man is standing on a hilltop when a man riding in a hot air balloon starts to drift by. The man in the balloon asks "Do you know where I am?" The man on the ground replies "In a hot air balloon." The man in the balloon says "You must work in Information Technology. What you told me is 100% correct, but does not help me at all" To which the man on the ground replies "You must be in Business Administration, because you are in the same mess you were in before, but now it is my fault!"
A solar physicist walks into a bar, gets the bartender's attention, and says "I'd like a Mexican beer, please."
The bartender immediately begins shouting "OK, everybody out! Right now! Everyone out of the bar!" And he heards all the patrons out into the street, slamming the door behind them.
The solar physicist shakes his head ruefully. "Darn," he says, "I should have seen that Corona mass ejection coming!"
(By the way, it goes without saying that the bar is in SoHo.)
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a skull.
I always assumed that Bob and Alice were in a strictly distance relationship so I don't see how they would ever meet in a bar. I think the closest they would ever get to physically making love would be a double-encrypted phone sex conversation.
So yeah, my Alice and Bob joke is this:
What did Alice and Bob believe is the most important thing to remember when having sex? To always practice mathematically secure sex!
The chair of the physics department goes to the provost for the annual budget review.
"I've got some good news and some bad news. The good news is we have alot of exciting things going on in the department - some potential Noble-prize winning stuff. The bad news is we need a new particle accelerator which will cost $10M."
The Provost is shocked. "That is alot of money. It is incredible to me how different departments need different things. Why can't you be more like the math department? They only want Paper, Pencils and wastebaskets. And the philosophy department doesn't even want the wastebaskets..."
Seuss - I'm telling you this 'cause you're one of my friends. My alphabet starts where your alphabet ends
Daniel-son, X-on, X-off! X-on, X-off!
~8^]
Does the name Pavlov ring a bell?
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
Three (assume they're male) physics/engineering students are having a conversation.
The first one says, "The strangest thing happened to me the other day! I was walking across campus, minding my own business, when a beautiful woman rode up to me on her bicycle. She threw down the bike, tore off her clothes and threw them to the ground, and then cried to me, 'Take whatever you want!'."
His friends look at each other knowingly. One replies, "So, you took the bike, right?"
"Of course! The clothes never would have fit me."
What's Avocado's Number?
A Guacamole. Bwaaaahahahahaaaaa. Heeheehee.
*sniffle*
When someone greets me with 'what's new?', I reply...
Nu is the 13th letter of the Greek alphabet...
Old programmers don't die, they're just cast into the void.
Heisenberg is out for a drive when he's stopped by a traffic cop. The cop says "Do you know how fast you were going?" Heisenberg says "No, but I know where I am."
Tech News, Reviews and Tutorials
Q. What goes "Pieces of seven, pieces of seven"?
A. A parity error
WORK = F D
F = M A
WORK = M A D
--
"Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
"Open source is evil." - Microsoft
...and they mostly look at me funny.
Q: What do you get when you cross a mosquito with a mountain climber?
A: You can't cross a vector with a scaler.
-Carolyn
Like Daddy always said: if you can't dazzle 'em with brilliance, baffle 'em with bullshit.
I am still a declared physics and math major, even though I'm now CS. Anyhow, here's my favorite math joke:
There was a man in a nuthouse who constantly scared off all the newcomers with a menacing smile and the dreadful-sounding phrase, "I differentiate you! I differentiate you!"--invariably the newcomer would cower in the corner and stay far away from the man.
However, one day another man came in and confronted the first man. Of course, the first began yelling at the newcomer, "I differentiate you! I differentiate you!" But it had no effect on the newcomer. The man yelled "I differentiate you!" several times to no avail. Finally, he broke down in tears. "Why, why?!?" he asked.
The second man stated simply, "I'm e^x."
Someone once said that the point of higher education was so that you could understand more jokes.
Mr. Kepler: Hey there Earth! I heard you got a new job as a janitor. How's it goin'?
Earth: *sigh* Mmmmm...ok, but my boss always makes me sweep out the same area!
Heisenberg looks around the bar and says, "Because there are three of us and because this is a bar, it must be a joke. But the question remains, is it funny or not?"
And Godel thinks for a moment and says, "Well, because we're inside the joke, we can't tell whether it's funny. We'd have to be outside looking at it."
And Chomsky looks at both of them and says, "Of course it's funny. You're just telling it wrong."
GET YOUR WEAPONS READY! --DR.LIGHT
...I don't get it
This one requires a little bit of visualization, so get out a pen and paper if necessary. Some friends and I once wrote the following on a chalkboard:
integral e^x = f(un)
The teacher, upon seeing this, showed his appreciation by adding a subscript ny to the right side of the equation.
Now for another one of my personal favorites, told in the manner of an algebraic proof.
1. Girls require time and money. Or, to say it another way, girls are the product of an investment of time and money:
girls = time * money
2. Time is money:
time = money
3. Therefore, by substitution:
girls = (money)^2
4. According to the new testament, money is the root of all evil:
money = (all evil)^(1/2)
5.Performing another subsitution:
girls = all evil
Anonymous Luddite: "What do you think of the dehumanizing effects of the Internet?"
Andy Grove: "Not Much."
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The wedding wasn't too great, but the reception was awesome.
ba-dum ching
came up with this while reading Brian Greenes "Elegant Universe" while working on U.S. taxes:
The Internal Revenue Service has a way of making addition,
subtraction, multiplication and division seem like rocket science.
CERN and Stephen Hawkings have collaborated to produce this simplified U.S. tax form.
1040-QUARK
1) Enter your Name 2) Enter the number of protons in your nucleus.
3) Multiply the entry in Line 2 by the mass of an electron
4) Check the box that indicates the number of dimensions in your
universe. 0, 1, 11, 15, Infinite
5) Enter the number planck-sized spheres will fit in this universe?
(Use worksheet F-theta) Enter your answer in column 6
NOTE: It may be useful to transform your universe into the mirror
equivalent calubi-yau space in order to simplify calculations.
6)
6a) Add the result of 6a to the winding number of the strings in this
calubi-yau space, subtract the number of holes in odd numbered
dimensions.
Enter your answer in column 7. (Use worksheet J-delta and/or a
Super-Hadron collider)
NOTE: Be careful, you can shoot your eye out with a super-hadron
collider.
8) Enter the value of payments you've made into social security.
9) Use the lorentz social security contraction equation to figure out
how much will remain by time you retire (1-1/SQRT(v^2/c^2) ) where c is
the number of members of congress
36) Add columns 1-6a divide your answer by the rest mass of a photon,
this is how much you owe.
37) Multiply your answer by the rest mass of a neutrino. This is how
much you get back.
engineering professor of mine:
...well, I thought it was funny...
"The difference between aircraft structural engineering and civil engineering is that, in civil engineering, structures don't usually move unless there is a lawsuit involved."
.
.
.
A goal is a dream with a deadline
Q. There were two cats on a roof. Which one slid off first?
A. The one with the lower mew.
11.0010010000111111011010101000100010000101101000
Mind you, this only works in states where (license_plate_capacity >= (char characters[8]);.
(Yes, I know, that's really bad code.)
This sig no verb.
I heard this funny story which was said to be a true incident. I like the subtle frame-of-reference joke.
Norbert Weiner was driving along a country road, when he got involved in a one-car accident, he drove off the road head-on into a telephone pole. When the police arrived, they asked him what happened. He said,
"I was driving along, the telephone poles were passing me in a regular order, when suddenly they swerved!"
How many consulting engineers does it take to change a light bulb? One, that'll be $50 please.
How many nuclear physicists does it take to change a light bulb? One, he raises it into place and the world revolves around him.
How many programmers does it take to change a light bulb? Can't be done. It's a hardware problem.
How many mathematicians does it take to change a light bulb? Approximately 1.000000000000000000000.
How many Pentium owners does it take to change a light bulb? 0.99987, but that's close enough for most applications.
How many Microsoft engineers does it take to change a light bulb? It burned out? You must be using a non-standard socket.
How many Microsoft engineers does it take to change a light bulb? None, they merely change the standard to darkness and then they upgrade the customers.
How many Apple employees does it take to screw in a light bulb? Seven, one to screw it in and six to design the T-shirts.
How many AOL users does it take to change a light bulb? Two, one to screw in the light bulb, and one to watch him to make sure he doesn't say 'nipple'.
How many software engineers does it take to change a light bulb? Two. One always leaves in the middle of the project.
How many beta testers does it take to change a light bulb? None. They just find the problems, they don't fix them.
How many science fiction writers does it take to change a light bulb? Two, but it's actually the same person doing it. He went back in time and met himself in the doorway and then the first one sat on the other one's shoulder so that they were able to reach it. Then a major time paradox occurred and the entire room, light bulb, changer and all was blown out of existence.
Absurd! The accountant will say the wife-- she's tax deducible.
The first says "I'll have a martini"
The second says "Darn I wanted a Martini too"
- Credit my E&M Prof.
"Open the pod by doors, Hal" > "I'm afraid I can't do that, Dave" sudo "Open the pod bay doors, Hal" > alright
An engineer, a physicist, and a mathematician are sent into a room and told they can only come out when they can answer the question, "What is the sum of two and two?" The engineer comes out immediately and says, "It's 4 +/- 0.0003". The physicist comes out a few minutes later and says, "It's 4." The mathematician staggers out disheveled eight hours laters and announces breathlessly, "There is a solution!!"
#!
Not really. Considering it in the superposition of states context from which the analogy derived, the particle (cat) does have a wavefunction, which must integrate to 1 over all space. That wavefunction/state can be a superposition of two well-defined states/functions, which in the cat context means it's dead and alive.
To be more accurate, LifeState(Cat)=A*"alive"+(1-A)*"dead", where A is a real number between 0 and 1, and "alive" and "dead" are two valid, real-valued states/values, each of which derives from an operator "LifeState" and two respective "wavefunctions" that square-integrate to 1 over all space and together make up the composite wavefunction "Cat." So the cat's half-alive, half-dead.
Wow, that was fun.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
There's more than two formulas in physics :-)
The energy of a photon is E = h f (or E = h nu)
The relation between wavelength and frequency is c = lambda f.
Where do you extract Mercury from?
Hg Wells
(/me runs away)
My Stack Overflow user
A mathematician, a physicist, and an engineer were asked to review this mathematical problem. In a high school gym, all the girls in the class were lined up against one wall, and all the boys against the opposite wall. Then, every ten seconds, they walked toward each other until they were half the previous distance apart. The mathematician, physicist, and engineer were asked, " When will the girls and boys meet?" The mathematician said, " Never." The physicist said, " In an infinite amount of time." The engineer said, " Well... in about two minutes, they'll be close enough for all practical purposes."
A biologist, a physisist, and a mathematician are standing outside of a building. Two people walk in. After a few minutes, three people walk out.
.75 liters of water, and douses the flames. Having put out the fire, he goes back to sleep.
"Aha!" the biologist says, "they must be breeding!"
"No, no," the physisist replies "this is could be bad. In order to preserve the laws of thermodynamics, someone else must go into the building."
The mathematician replys "But if someone else goes into the building, it will be empty."
--------------
An engineer, a physisist, and a mathematician, and a statisticain are all staying at a hotel. In the middle of the night the engineer wakes up to find that his trashcan is on fire. He runs to the sink, fills his ice bucket with water and douses the flames. Then, just to be sure, he runs back to the sink, refills the bucket and dumps more water into the trashcan. With the fire out, he goes back to sleep.
A little while later, the trashcan in the physists room spontaneously breaks into flame, waking the physisist. He whips out his slide rule, does some calculations, then runs to the sink, fills his bucket with exactly
A few minutes later, the mathematician wakes up to see that his trashcan is on fire. He whips out a piece of paper, scrawls out some equations, then goes back to sleep, comfortable that a solution exists.
Meanwhile, the statisticain is running from room to room lighting trashcans on fire -- he needed more samples.
--------------
neh, i tried...
Rhapsody in Numbers
An electron, a proton, and a neutron walked into a bar which had a sign, "All drinks $1.00." The electron said, "Hey guys we only have $2.00 among the three of us". The proton said, don't worry there is no CHARGE for the neutron. The electron said, "Are you sure?" The proton answered, "I'm positive."
Hopefully I get these right. I have them saved in my away messages at home, let's see if I can remember them.
( *#&@!(#^$*#$_(*@!&#*&@!$#"
Two bytes are in a bar. One says to the other, "I'm not feeling that well. I think I have a parity error". The other byte responds, "I thought you looked a bit off!"
rimshot
Two strings walk into a bar. The first says "Barkeep, I'll have a whiskey sour." The second string says "Hey, that sounds good. I think I'll have one too.(&!@(**(#$^(*(*&@(*!$&(*@#&(*(!@#)(*(*@!$(&!@
The first string says to the bartender "Excuse my friend, he isn't null terminated."
There are only 10 kinds of people in this world... those who understand binary and those who don't
Warning, this is quite pathetic (more along the lines of demonstrating exactly how lacking in humour mathematicians are)
Q: What's an anagram of "Banach-Tarski"
A: "Banach-Tarski Banach-Tarski"
I did warn you it sucked...
Jedidiah
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
Each has their apartment on fire:
The engineer walks in, seeing the fire he runs and grabs the biggest container he can find, fills it full of water, dumps it on the fire. The fire is out but the room is flooded, the stereo and tv are ruined, the couch is trashed, everything is soaked.
The physicist walks in to his own abode sees the fire, thinks a bit, does some calculations goes and grabs a container fills it with exactly 4.5 gallons of water, dumps it on the fire. The fire is out, there was just enough water to put out the fire and no more.
The mathematician walks, looks at the fire, grabs a pencil and paper and starts jotting down equations. Looks at the fire again, looks at the sink and a tub, jots down some more equations. Finally he puts down the paper, scratches his chin and says "Definitely possible."
A man walks into a bar and asks for a pint of Adenosine Tri-Phosphate, and the barman says: That'll be 80p (ATP).
There are 10 types of people in the world, those that know binary, and those that don't.
From http://www.247joke.com/jokes/programmers01.shtml:
A Software Engineer, a Hardware Engineer and a Departmental Manager were on their way to a meeting. They were driving down a steep mountain road when suddenly the brakes on their car failed. The car careened almost out of control down the road, bouncing off the crash barriers, until it miraculously ground to a halt scraping along the mountainside. The car's occupants, shaken but unhurt, now had a problem: they were stuck halfway down a mountain in a car with no brakes. What were they to do?
"I know," said the Departmental Manager, "Let's have a meeting, propose a Vision, formulate a Mission Statement, define some Goals, and by a process of Continuous Improvement find a solution to the Critical Problems, and we can be on our way."
"No, no," said the Hardware Engineer, "That will take far too long, and besides, that method has never worked before. I've got my Swiss Army knife with me, and in no time at all I can strip down the car's braking system, isolate the fault, fix it, and we can be on our way."
"Well," said the Software Engineer, "Before we do anything, I think we should push the car back up the road and see if it happens again."
I don't have this one exactly right, but it's something like this:
How many bits does it take to perform a shift left?
32, 1 to shift and 31 to push the register!
Facts are stubborn things.
A shepherd is herding his flock in a remote pasture when suddenly a brand-new BMW advances out of a dust cloud towards him.
The driver, a young man in a Brioni suit, Gucci shoes, Ray-Ban sunglasses and YSL tie, leans out the window and says to the shepherd: "If I tell you exactly how many sheep you have in your flock, will you give me one?"
The shepherd looks at the man, who is obviously a yuppie, then turns to his peaceful, grazing flock and calmly answers, "OK, why not?"
So the yuppie parks his car, whips out his IBM Thinkpad, connects it to his mobile phone, surfs the Internet and finds a NASA site. Then, using the Web site, he calls up a GPS satellite navigation system and scans the area.
Next he opens up a database and an Excel spreadsheet with complex formulas and after a few minutes he prints out a 150 page report on his hi-tech, miniaturized printer. Eventually he turns to the shepherd and says, "You have exactly 1,586 sheep."
"That's correct," says the shepherd "you can take one of the sheep."
He watches as the young man selects one of the animals and bundles it into his car, then says: "Hold on a minute, if I can tell you exactly what your business is, will you give me back my sheep?"
"OK, why not?" answers the young man.
"That's easy," says the shepherd "you're a consultant."
"That's spot on," says the yuppie, clearly amazed, "but how did you guess that?"
"There was no guessing required," answers the shepherd. "You turned up here, even though nobody called you. You expect to get paid to give me an answer I already knew, to a question I never asked, and you don't even know a thing
about my business. Now give me back my dog."
Only the hardcore chessnuts will get this one:
Q: What's the best defence against the sicilian?
A: 1. d4!
At my school, this bit of grafitti was found outside the physics building:
"Heisenberg probably rules"
Okay, so it is lame... made me laugh.
God save our Queen, and Heaven bless The Maple Leaf Forever!
This is by far my favorite Science joke... This was a question on some exam a few years back...
"Is hell exothermic or endothermic? Support your answer with a proof."
Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle?s Law or some variant. One student, however, wrote the following:
First, we postulate that if souls exist, they must have some mass.
If they do, then a mole of souls can also have a mass. So, at what rate are souls moving into hell and at what rate are souls leaving? I think that we can safely assume that once a soul gets to hell, it will not leave. Therefore, no souls are leaving.
As for souls entering hell, let?s look at the different religions that exist in the world today. Some of these religions state that if you are not a member of their religion, you will go to hell. Since there are more than one of these religions and people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all people and all souls go to hell.
With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in hell to increase exponentially.
Now, we look at the rate of change in volume in hell. Boyle?s Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in hell to stay the same, the ratio of the mass of souls to the volume must remain constant.
So, if hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter hell, then the temperature and pressure in hell will increase until all hell breaks loose. Of course, if hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until hell freezes over.
So which is it? If we accept the postulate given me by Therese Banyan during freshman year ("It will be a cold night in hell before I sleep with you"), and take into account the fact that I still have not succeeded in having sexual relations with her, then #2 cannot be true, and therefore hell must be exothermic.
My degree is in Physics from Virginia Tech, but the funniest thing I heard or saw while I was there was a sign while I was looking for the Philosophy Department to force-add a class that I needed to graduate. It read simply "Is this the Philosophy Department?" And I knew I was in the right place.
I'd like to dip my balls in that.
You might be an engineer if...
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Gravity does not exist, the universe just sucks.
User not found: Please check the world and try again.
So there are these two functions walking down the street, e^x and a constant. They're having a pleasant walk, catching up on old times, when all of a sudden they see someone walking towards them! "Oh my god! It's a derivative! I'm going to get killed!" says the constant, who runs away in the other direction as fast as possible. e^x thinks, "well, I'll be alright, I'm e^x, nothing can hurt me!" and continues on forwards. Soon they reach each other, and he introduces himself, "hi, I'm e^x." to which the derivative responds, "hi, I'm d/dy!"
"The number you have dialed is imaginary. Please rotate your phone 90 degrees and try again..."
qntm.org
I've tested this one in a stand-up routine. The average Joe/Jane rarely gets it. Anyone who knows lab-working scientists gets it right away.
A famous scientist was downtown, shopping with his wife, and clearly not enjoying it. She said "I'm going to shop for some shoes. You can go to the bookstore to browse. I'll meet you in front of the bookstore in an hour," and goes off.
The scientist goes into the bookstore. Soon after, a beautiful young coed comes in, eyes the scientist, and starts to make moves on him. He falls for the ploy, and ends up at her place, doing the nasty.
Three hours later, he realizes he's late, and rushes off back to the bookstore. There he finds his wife waiting, arms crossed, tapping her toe angrily.
Overcome with remorse he tells her what happened, admitting everything, and apologizing profusely.
She listens to his speech, and when he's done, shakes her finger at him and yells "Don't lie to me! You were at the lab!"
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
Johnny was a chem student :-)
He isn't anymore
For what he thought was H2O
Was H2SO4
-----
"You spilled my egg... I needed that egg."
DILBERT'S SALARY THEOREM
Dilbert's Salary Theorem states that engineers and scientists can never earn as much salary as business executives and sales people.
This theorem can now be supported by a mathematical equation based on the following three postulates:
Postulate 1: Knowledge is Power (Knowledge=Power)
Postulate 2: Time is Money (Time=Money)
Postulate 3 (as every engineer knows): Power = Work / Time
By substitution, since Knowledge = Power, Postulate 3 becomes:
Knowledge = Work / Time
and since Time = Money, we have:
Knowledge = Work / Money
Solving for Money, we get: Money = Work / Knowledge
Thus, as Knowledge approaches zero, Money approaches infinity, regardless of the amount of Work done.
Conclusion: The Less you Know, the More you Make.
Why did the Chicken Cross the Road?
ANDERSEN CONSULTING: Deregulation of the chicken's side of the road was threatening its dominant market position. The chicken was faced with significant challenges to create and develop the competencies required for the newly competitive market. Andersen Consulting, in a partnering relationship with the client, helped the chicken by rethinking its physical distribution strategy and implementation processes. Using the Poultry Integration Model (PIM), Andersen helped the chicken use its skills, methodologies, knowledge, capital and experiences to align the chicken's people, processes and technology in support of its overall strategy within a Program Management framework. Andersen Consulting convened a diverse cross-spectrum of road analysts and best chickens along with Anderson consultants with deep skills in the transportation industry to engage in a two-day itinerary of meetings in order to leverage their personal knowledge capital, both tacit and explicit, and to enable them to synergize with each other in oorder to achieve the implicit goals of delivering and successfully architecting and implementing an enterprise-wide value framework across the continuum of poultry cross-median processes. The meeting was held in a park-like setting, enabling and creating an impactful environment which was strategically based, industry-focused, and built upon a consistent, clear, and unified market message and aligned with the chicken's mission, vision, and core values. This was conducive towards the creation of a total business integration solution. Andersen Consulting helped the chicken change to become more successful.
So instead of rtfa it should be rtfep(read the fucking error page)
read my blog
musings on politics and technol
I mechanical engineer, a civil engineer and a software engineer are driving in a car. The car starts down a steep grade when the brakes fail. The driver pumps the brakes like mad, and the brakes catch just before they come to a skidding halt at the edge of a cliff.
The three engineers get out of the car, happy to be alive. Being engineers, they start to analyse the situation.
The mechanical engineer says "The problem here lies with the mechanical engineer who designed these brakes. The brakes should have been able to handle a car with this mass and speed on this road."
The civil engineer disagrees. "The problem is that the civil engineer that designed this road is at fault here. He shouldn't have build a road that is so steep that ordinary cars would be in danger."
The software engineer says "Why don't we just push it back up the hill and see if it happens again."
d'oh
;P
"Quantum mechanics" but same joke
Since I'm boring you with a second post, you win a free one-liner:
Entropy isn't what it used to be.
-.-- -.-- --..
One fish / Two fish / Red fish / Blue fish
ShyaOS - Think Differently!
So the teacher assigns to Ada, Bob, Charles and Danna to go home and figure out what is 2 + 2.
Ada, the daughter of a mathematitian, asks her dad. He responds: "Well, 1 + 1 = 2. 2+ 1 = 3. 3 + 1= 4, but it can be rewritten as 2 + 2, so 2 + 2 = 4"
Bob asks his mom, who is an engineer. She takes out her HP calculator, punches in RPN the appropiate keys, and announces: "It is 4.000000000000"
Charles asks his dad, the phycisist, and he responds: "Well, it is about pi on a zeroth order calculation"
Finally, Danna ask his dad, who is an accountant: "Dad, how much is 2 + 2?" And he responds: "How much do you want it to be?"
"There is no teacher but the enemy."-Mazer Rackham
I used to see an old Cold War-era flyer on the bulletin board in the linear accellerator building on my local campus, it eventually got taken down and I've been looking for a copy ever since. Maybe someone remembers this classic physics joke, someone HAS to have a copy posted on the web somewhere.
It was a list of "solutions to the submarine detection problem" or something like that. It purported to show how each scientific discipline would locate Russian submarines.
I only remember a couple of the solutions. Nuclear physicists would bombard the ocean with radiation to convert all the water to heavy water, changing the neutral density point and messing up the boyancy of subs, making them all rise to the surface. Mechanical engineers would build huge dams around the Atlantic, pump all the water into the Pacific, and then the submarines would be left sitting on the ocean bottom where they could be spotted by aircraft.
I think you get the basic idea, I remember it being totally hilarious, and I'm sure my two lame examples did not do it justice.
so a bunch of functions are sitting at a bar. and they get word that the DIFFERENTIAL IS COMING! so they're all like, "OH NO!!! HIDE!!!" and they all run off except for ONE!!! e^x. he sits there, acting all tough. and when the differential comes in he's like you can't differentiate me. I'm E TO THE X!!!! and the differential gives it an evil grin and sez whoever said that I differentiate with respect to x?
if new true friend not protected for explicit private union, break case and try using this.
--Nathan Meyers
Ok, the set up, I have curly hair and I let it grow out into something reminscent of Einstein. I finally cut it, really short, and that week I went to the Society of Physics Students meeting here at Columbia. guy: "Wow, your hair has no curl anymore!" ... long pause as we digest the phys joke...
me: "Wait, are you trying to say my haircut is conservative?"
--Leo
"I caught my daughter playing with the electrical outlet, and she gave herself quite a shock. I had to ground her."
*Groans elicted from the crowd*
"Hey, what do you expect? I'm a conductor."
and figures he had better learn the two-step. Although a good dancer, he just can't get the hang of it. He asks for help from a native Texan.
"Just make sure to keep the beat in your head. One-two, one-two, one-two."
"Oh -- all this time I'd been saying to myself 'zero-one, zero-one, zero-one.'"
Orange whip? Orange whip? Three orange whips.
At New York's JFK airport today, an individual, later discovered to be a
public school math 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 (WMI).
"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 values. They consist of quite shadowy
figures, with names like, "x", "y" and "z", 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 angle'" he added.
When asked to comment on the arrest, President Bush said, "Make no
mistake, if God had wanted US to have better weapons of math
instruction, He would have given us more fingers and toes."
A member of the Presidential group, who spoke without attribution said,
"I'm extremely grateful that our government has given us a sine that it
is intent on protracting us from these math-dogs who are so willing to
disintegrate us with calculus disregard. These statistic bastards love
to inflict plane on every sphere of influence. Under the circumferences,
it's time we differentiated their root, made our point, and drew the
line."
President Bush said, "these weapons of math instruction have the
potential to decimal everything in their math on a scalene never before
seen unless we become exponents of a Higher Power and begin to factor-in
random facts of vertex."
Attorney General Ashcroft said, "As our Great Leader would say, 'Read
My Ellipse'. Here is one principle he is uncertainty of---though they
continue to multiply --- their days are numbered and the hypotenuse
will tighten around their necks."
Richard M. Stallman, Linus Torvalds, and Donald E. Knuth engage in a discussion on whose impact on the computerized world was the greatest.
Stallman: "God told me I have programmed the best editor in the world!"
Torvalds: "Well, God told *me* that I have programmed the best operating system in the world!"
Knuth: "Wait, wait - I never said that."
--Erik Meltzer, rec.humor.funny
Found here (I couldn't reach the original page today; this is a link to google's cache of the page)
philcrissman.com.
(Pointed out to me by my fellow colleague at UCSD
As an engineering student (any type, ME, EE, CSE, CS, etc.) it sucks to have classes with barely any girls (eye candy) to help get you through those dry lectures. And the girls that are there, are butt ugly - really, 99.99% of the time, they are.
During the 1st week of classes, you're excited to be in a new class, excited to see new people and hopefully see some fine lookin' girls in class. You listen during lecture and become very dissapointed at the fact that there are no girls in your class, and the girls that are there, are yuck - remember these are girls you wouldn't even take a second glance (let alone a first) to look at. You and many others start to ditch class, because you can "teach yourself" all the crap the prof is talking about.
Around 5th week, just before mids, everybody comes back to class, and you look around again, still with that small glimmer of hope and see that the girls are still the same, but this time, you think, "Hmm . . . that girl is alright; that one isn't bad at all; she's f@ckable . . ." Remember, these are the same butt ugly looking girls.
Around 9-10th week just before finals, everybody goes to class again, and this time, as you check out the girls, you think, "Damn, she looks good, I'll go for her; She's fine, I'll ask her out . . ." and so on. Remember these are the same girls.
Peculiar how 10 weeks can change someone's mind about engineering girls. That, my friend, is the plight of the male engineer . . . University Goggles.
One of my coworkers wives...
Must have been a Utah license plate.
There are a huge number of yeast infections in this county. Probably because we're downriver from the bread factory.
Amazingly, that appears to be the only copy on the WWW. I'm surprised it doesn't show up in Google Groups.
-- Bill
A physicist, a chemist, and an engineer are asked:
Q: "What is the best way to determine the volume of a little red ball."
A: Physicist: Measure the diameter, devide by two for radius and use the formula 4/3 * PI * radius ^ 3
A: Chemist: Take a beaker, fill it with water. Dunk the ball in it, and measure the amount of water displaced.
A: Engineer: It's easy, just pull out the "Little Red Ball" book and look it up.
The Georiga Tech graduate finishes and walks right towards the door. On his way out he says "At Tech they teach us not to piss on our hands".
"And at the Air Force Academy, we didn't have to be taught not to pee on our hands."
(Originally heard with Army, Navy, Marine, and USAF graduates)
My bro-in-law just took a class where the professor asked a question like that: "You're driving in the rain, and you see 3 people waiting at a bus stop looking cold and wet: your best friend, an old lady, and a beautiful woman. Unfortunately, you're driving a sporty 2-seater. What do you do?"
He said "Well, the answer you're looking for is 'loan the car to your best friend, tell him to drive the old lady home, and walk to the nearest coffee shop with the woman.' But in real life, women like assholes. So I'd pound my beer, throw the can at the old lady, tell my friend to hop in the car, and yell to the woman 'I'll be back for you after we get back from the bar!"
c-hack.com |
A hurricane came unexpectedly. The ship went down and was lost. The man found himself swept up on the shore of an island with no other people, no supplies, nothing. Only bananas and coconuts. Used to 5-star hotels, this guy had no idea what to do, so for the next four months he ate bananas, drank coconut juice and longed for his old life and fixed his gaze on the sea, hoping to spot a rescue ship.
One day, as he was lying on the beach, he spotted movement out of the corner of his eye. It was a rowboat, and in it was the most gorgeous woman he had ever seen. She rowed up to him.
In disbelief, he asked her: "Where did you come from? How did you get here?"
"I rowed from the other side of the island," she said. "I landed here when my cruise ship sank."
"Amazing," he said. "I didn't know anyone else had survived. How many are there? You were lucky to have a rowboat wash up with you."
"There's only me," she said, "and the rowboat didn't wash up; nothing did." He was confused.
"Then how did you get the rowboat?"
"Oh, simple," replied the woman. "I made the rowboat out of materials that I found on the island. The oars were whittled from Gum tree branches. I wove the bottom from palm branches and the sides and stern came from a Eucalyptus tree."
"B-B-But that's impossible," stuttered the man. "You had no tools or hardware. How did you manage?"
"Oh, that was no problem," replied the woman. "On the other side of the island there is a very unusual stratum of alluvial rock exposed. I found that if I fired it to a certain temperature in my kiln, it melted into forgeable ductile iron. I used that for tools, and used the tools to make the hardware. But enough of that," she said. "Where do you live?"
Sheepishly, he confessed that he had been sleeping on the beach the whole time.
"Well, let's row over to my place, then," she said.
After a few minutes of rowing she docked the boat at a small wharf. As the man looked to the shore he nearly fell out of the boat. Before him was a stone walk leading to an exquisite bungalow painted in blue and white.
While the woman tied up the rowboat with an expertly woven hemp rope, the man could only stare ahead, dumbstruck. As they walked into the house, she said casually, "It's not much, but I call it home. Sit down, please; would you like a drink?"
"No, no thank you," he said, still dazed. "I can't take any more coconut juice."
"It's not coconut juice," the woman replied. "I have a still. How about a Pina Colada?"
Trying to hide his amazement, the man accepted, and they sat down on her couch to talk. After they had exchanged their stories, the woman announced, "I'm going to slip into something comfortable. Would you like to take a shower and shave? There is a razor upstairs in the cabinet in the bathroom."
No longer questioning anything, the man went into the bathroom. There in the cabinet was a razor made from a bone handle. Two shells honed to a hollow ground edge were fastened onto it's end inside a swivel mechanism.
"This woman is amazing," he mused. "What next?"
When he returned, she greeted him wearing nothing but vines - strategically positioned - and smelling faintly of gardenias. She beckoned for him to sit down next to her.
"Tell me," she began, suggestively, slithering closer to him, "we've been out here for a very long time. You've been lonely. There's something I'm sure you really feel like doing right now, something you've been longing for all these months. You know..." She stared into his eyes.
He couldn't believe what he was hearing. "You mean??" he replied, "? I can check slashdot.com from here?"
but maybe someone will see this and get a laugh...
My physics teacher in high school told of the graffiti in the bathroom in the physics building at his alma mater. While the other bathrooms around the campus had the usual bathroom scrawlings, the physics bathrooms were clean, except for a single limeric:
The once was a lady named Bright,
Who could travel faster than light.
She went out one day,
In her usual way,
And returned the previous night!
"Save the whales, feed the hungry, free the mallocs" -- author unknown
A physics professor, is riding his bicycle around a desolate San Jose strip mall, sad and lonely because his girl left him to live on a beach in Hawai.
He kicks an odd shaped, klein bottle lying under a bag of chips and rotten apples.
A flash and a bang and next thing you know a hacker genie-us is standing there, glaring at him with distaste. "Ok so your name tag says your a low-life newbie Physics guy. Sorry but your licenced version of reality only allows one level 3 rapid response wish. All other wishes I must transfer to local help desk support."
"My girl left me cos she thinks I don't have a job, please build me an application that can design a bridge, so I can ride over on my bike and see her!
"Are you nuts, thats a ridiculous waste of expensive computer design time, besides its too simple an engineering problem to be worthwhile, just use an existing bridge design and scale up the stress and load factors to account for the depth of water, and other negligible physical effects. Pick a serious problem!"
Ok, ha ha, just kidding!, here's my cellphone, please call my girlfreind and explain to her what a Physics Professor does for a living, so she comes back to me.
"Hmmm, I see your problem, ok, how many bike lanes did you want on that bridge?"
There is no god; get over it already! Never exchange a walk on part in the war, for a lead role in a cage.
Heisenberg was driving down the Autobahn whereupon he was pulled over by a policeman. The policeman asked, "Do you know how fast you were going back there?" Heisenberg replied, "No, but I know where I am."
Taken from here.
x and e^x are walking down the street. They encounter d/dx, who operates on them. x disappears. e^x survives, thanking the math gods that he is immune to differential operators. While walking on, he encounters another operator coming toward him. "Who are you?" he asks. "I'm d/dy," the operator answers.
Well, I like it.
Warning! Do not look into laser with remaining eye!
Depends how metaphysically you mean that. I say not. There is one universe, but an effectivelty infinite number of ways to observe it. Are two different observations of the same universes tantamount to having different universes? I dunno. This ties in directly to the old Eastern proverb of "If a tree falls in a forest...".
What constitutes an "observer"?
I'll change the question somewhat. An observer is you. You (presumably) don't perturb the system. But any *observation* regarding the system that gives you information by definition must have interacted with the system, and vice versa. This gives the possibility that the system changed in significant ways during the time you made the measurements. Thus, it's observations, not observers, that matters. A subtle distinction.
Classic example is if I'm determining the position of an electron. How would I do that? Presumably with a series of photons, which I would aim at the general area where the electron might be. When one bounced back, I could calculate where the electron was. But there's a problem - depending on the wavelength of light I use, the measurement is imprecise, and there is a standard error of half a wavelength. So, with visible light, I can only get to within, say, a few hundred nanometers. Not good.
What do I do to fix the problem? Go with light of a shorter wavelength. Say x-rays. Now, we're down to the Angstrom level. Lots more accurate.
Now Heisenberg comes in to play. So let's say I've determined the position of the electron with near infinite accuracy using a short wavelength and thus extremely high energy photon. Since I determined the position of the electron by bouncing this electron off of it, what happened to the electron? Well, I sure blasted the hell out of it with those x-rays. So I effectively know nothing about its momentum.
So, to more accurately measure position, I have to do something to the system which ultimately makes measuring momentum impossible. There are a number of variable pairs like this - Energy and time, for instance. Basically, variable pairs like this have units that multiply into Energy*time. (momentum is distance, momentum is Energy*time/distance).
Going back to the cat, it's effectively a system that exists in one of two valid states, which can be easily perturbed. Doing anything to the system that tells you its state can also change its state. But Schrodinger wasn't talking about HUP, really, although the two concepts are inexorably linked. If he were, he would have said something like, if you determine 100% whether it's dead, you can no longer know whether it's a Tabby or a Persian any longer. What he was actually elucidating is the following: a state that is a superposition (ie, weighted average essentially) of all valid states is, in quantum, also a valid state, and is the only thing that can be assumed in an unperturbed system. Hence, "alive and dead" is a valid state, because "alive" and "dead" are. See more Here regarding superposition.
Actually, that last statement is a tad off but I'm not writing a textbook. If anyone wants to call me on it, please do so I can put more people with physics abilities on my friends list. ;)
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
Q: Why couldn't the fisherman stop spinning? A: Angler momentum [An original!] Q: What's grey and proves the nondenumerability of the Reals? A: Cantor's Diagonal Elephant Q: What's yellow and depends on the Axiom of Choice? A: Zorn's Lemmon Q: What's yellow and is expressible as a power series? A: A bananalytic function Q: What does a mathematician do when he's constipated? A: He work's it out with a pencil. THANK YOU! I'll be here all week...
The barman covers his eyes, trying not to look. As he sneaks a glimpse through his fingers, he sees something wierd - he can't make out what they're doing. He looks again, but is still confused. He turns to the drunk propping up the bar next to him, and asks, "What's going on? He seems to be screwing her over the table AND getting a blowjob at the same time. That doesn't make any sense. Looks brilliant though, doesn't it?"
"Yeh," sighs the drunk whistfully, "It's a super position."
An anthropologist and a physicist were travelling in some of the remote areas of the Brazillian rain forest. One day they came upon a tribe hitherto unknown to Western observers. This tribe had an agrarian economy that provided for all their needs. Not only was the area fertile and supportive of a wide variety of plants, but there were a great number of pollinators for their varied crops. As it happened, the pair had stumbled on this tribe during one of their most holy days - the day they celebrate the wonders of their unique botanical area and the insects that support it. The anthropologist of course observed all of the preparations and carefully noted down all of the rituals, including the covering of the young women of village with a locally produced blue pigment. There were dancing, song, and much merriment - much to the delight of the anthropologist and the physicist. At dawn the next day, the two followed the villagers as they led the tribe to their most holy area: the nesting area of their insect pollinators. As the anthropologist recorded all the details, the blue-painted young women broke from the group and performed a number of intricate ritual dances. As the dancing became more complex, the anthropologist became overwhelmed with the level detail he observed. In evident confusion, he turned to his friend, the physicist, for help in understanding what they were seeing. The physicist merely replied, "Oh it's really very simple. You're just watching a manifestation of the dye virgins of the bee field."
So a hardware engineer, an electrical engineer, and a software engineer are driving along when the car starts having problems. The get to the side of the road just as it dies. Having called a tow truck, the ME says "why don't I check the drivetrain, just in case it's a simple mechanical problem?" "Good idea," says the EE. "I'll see if I can find anything wrong with the ignition system." "Guys," says the software engineer, "why don't we just close all the windows, get out of the car, then get back in?"
A computer scientist is found dead in the shower, apparently due to blood loss throgh the scalp, which was severly abraded. The only clue was a bottle of shampoo which read "Lather, Rinse, Repeat."
An engineer is walking through a park on his way to work when he hears a voice. He looks down an sees a frog on the sidewalk. "Kiss me" says the frog. The engineer thinks for a moment, then picks up the frog and puts it in his pocket. Once he gets to work, he takes the frog out and sets it on his disk. Again, the frog says "Kiss me!" The engineer chuckles, then puts the frog in a drawer and starts working. At lunch time, he opens the drawer and looks inside. "Hey," says the frog, "don't you know that talking frogs turn into beatufil women when kissed?" "Yeah," says the engineer, "but I'm an engineer, so I don't really do well with women. But a talking frog? Now _that's_ cool."
A company sends 3 engineers and 3 marketing guys to a conference. At the train station, the marketing guys each but a ticket, and then the engineers split the cost of one ticket between them. The marketing guys are curious, but the engineers just say "you'll see." When the train arrives, they take seats and resume discussing company business, until the conductor comes into the car. At that point, the engineers excuse themselves, and stealthily pile into a restroom at the far end of the car. Eventually, the conductor makes his way down, knocks on the door, and says "Ticket, please." The door opens ajar and a hand reaches out with a ticket.
On the return trip, the marketing guys take a hint and buy one ticket beween the three of them. This time, though, the engineers don't buy any tickets. Again, the marketing guys are curious, but the engineers just say "you'll see."
This time, when the conductor enters the car, the marketing guys pile into a bathroom at the far end. A few minutes later, the engineers do the same, one of the stopping to knock on the first bathroom and say "Ticket, please."
The optimist says the glass is half full. The pessimist says it's half empty. The engineer says the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
How many prolog prolog programmers does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
No.
What do you get if you cross a mountain climber and a billy goat?
You can't cross scalars.