We’ve had an outbreak of mathematician jokes in comments, so it seems only fair to offer up a thread for the mockery of physics. Sadly, there really aren’t many good physicist jokes. My personal favorite:
A physicist, a chemist, and a biologist get together for a few drinks, and get to talking about life, the Universe, and everything. Eventually the conversation turns to relationships, and what the ideal way to arrange relationships between the sexes would be.
The biologist says “Well, as a believer in evolution, I feel that every person should sleep with as many other people as possible, in order to provide the greatest range of potential diversity for natural selection to work on.”
The chemist says, “No, no, no- that’s all wrong. There are some bonds that are just too strong to break, and the marriage bond is one of those. Everyone should be strictly monogamous.”
They both turn to the physicst, who says, “Well, I think I’d sort of split the difference between those. I think every man should have one wife, and one mistress, and furthermore, each should be aware of the other.”
The other two are absolutely boggled. “Why in the world would you want that?,” they ask.
“Well,” he says, “That way, if I wasn’t with my wife, she would assume I was with my mistress. And if I wasn’t with my mistress, she would assume I was with my wife. then I could go in the lab and get some work done.”
Suggestions of other funny physics jokes are welcome in the comments. Also, see Jokes With Einstein for an interesting take on classic math riddles. Otherwise, have a nice weekend, and I’ll be back on Monday.
I did a little searching around the net and found this on Science Jokes:
A promising PhD candidate was presenting his thesis at his final examination. He proceeded with a derivation and ended up with something like:
F = -MA
He was embarrassed, his supervising professor was embarrassed, and the rest of the committee was embarrassed. The student coughed nervously and said “I seem to have made a slight error back there somewhere.”
One of the mathematicians on the committee replied dryly, “Either that or an odd number of them!”
Dave — but of course. Everyone knows a good theorist is one who makes an even number of sign errors!
My favorite among physicist jokes is a small bit of grafitti:
“Heisenberg was maybe here”
So, this guy goes to a lecture on string theory with a mathematician friend of his. The string theorist enthusiastically gave a long lecture on ten and eleven dimensions, black holes and all sorts of other fun stuff. By the end of the lecture, this guy turns to his mathematician friend and say, “well, that was really interesting, but I just have a hard time trying to picture all this ten-dimensional stuff. It’s pretty far out there.”. The mathematician responds, “Actually, it’s not that bad. The trick is to start by picturing everything in n dimensions. After that, it’s easy to specialize to the case n=10.”
How many theoretical quantum physicists does it take to change a light bulb?
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.
.
.
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One. One to turn the bulb, one to hold the ladder, and one to renormalize the wave function.
Another one similar to the main post:
A physics professor, his post-doc, and one of his grad students are walking across campus on their way to lunch, when they stuble over an odd metal object half-buried in the ground. Pulling it out and dusting it off, they find it’s on oil lamp, and a genie appears.
“For releasing me, I will give you each one wish,” the genie says.
The grad student speaks up first: “You know what?,” he says, “Screw this physics stuff. I want to be on a tropical beach with a drink in my hand and a beautiful woman at my side.” And *poof*, he’s gone.
The post-doc speaks next and says, “You know, I’ve decided I really don’t want to be in this field anymore, and this guy’s a slave driver– I wish I had a post-doc in biophysics, at Major Research U.” And *poof*, he’s gone.
The professor looks at the genie, and says, “Those two better be back in the lab at 1:15.”
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.”
— mikeophile (UID#647318) in a Slashdot comment
(SID#158640 CID#13292281) also on Bash.org (#512736)
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From the Debian fortune files:
A gangster assembled an engineer, a chemist, and a physicist. He explained that he was entering a horse in a race the following week and the three assembled guys had the job of assuring that the gangster’s horse would win. They were to reconvene the day before the race to tell the gangster how they each propose to ensure a win. When they reconvened the gangster started with the engineer:
Gangster: OK, Mr. engineer, what have you got?
Engineer: Well, I’ve invented a way to weave metallic threads into the saddle blanket so that they will act as the plates of a battery and provide electrical shock to the horse.
G: That’s very good! But let’s hear from the chemist.
Chemist: I’ve synthesized a powerful stimulant that disolves into simple blood sugars after ten minutes and therefore cannot be detected in post-race tests.
G: Excellent, excellent! But I want to hear from the physicist before I decide what to do. Physicist?
Physicist: Well, first consider a spherical horse in simple harmonic motion…
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An engineer, a physicist and a mathematician find themselves in an
anecdote, indeed an anecdote quite similar to many that you have no doubt already heard. After some observations and rough calculations the engineer realizes the situation and starts laughing. A few minutes later the physicist understands too and chuckles to himself happily as he now has enough experimental evidence to publish a paper. This leaves the mathematician somewhat perplexed, as he had observed right away that he was the subject of an anecdote, and deduced quite rapidly the presence of humour from similar anecdotes, but considers this anecdote to be too trivial a corollary to be significant, let alone funny.
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If it smells it’s chemistry, if it crawls it’s biology, if it doesn’t work it’s physics.
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There was a mad scientist (a mad… social… scientist) who kidnapped three colleagues, an engineer, a physicist, and a mathematician, and locked each of them in seperate cells with plenty of canned food and water but no can opener.
A month later, returning, the mad scientist went to the engineer’s cell and found it long empty. The engineer had constructed a can opener from pocket trash, used aluminum shavings and dried sugar to make an explosive, and escaped.
The physicist had worked out the angle necessary to knock the lids off the tin cans by throwing them against the wall. She was developing a good pitching arm and a new quantum theory.
The mathematician had stacked the unopened cans into a surprising solution to the kissing problem; his dessicated corpse was propped calmly against a wall, and this was inscribed on the floor:
Theorem: If I can’t open these cans, I’ll die.
Proof: assume the opposite…
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There are no physicists in the hottest parts of hell, because the existence of a “hottest part” implies a temperature difference, and any marginally competent physicist would immediately use this to run a heat engine and make some other part of hell comfortably cool. This is obviously impossible.
— Richard Davisson
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See also Bob the Angry Flower’s Schrödinger’s Fridge
http://www.angryflower.com/schrod.gif
Chad,
That Prof/Postdoc/Grad joke is one of my favorites. I reminds me of my early days of grad school when I noticed my office mates who worked for a young, untenured, experimentalist were in the building at all hours of the day and night. When I asked why, they replied, “if Rich is in the lab, we had better be in the lab…and Rich is *always* in the lab.”
Here’s one I should have taken more to heart in grad school:
A grad student is walking to campus when he encounters a talking frog, who says, “please sir, I’m really a beautiful princess. If you kiss me I will become human again and be forever grateful.”
The student puts the frog in his pocket and walks on. Soon he hears muffled shouts from his pocket and pulls out the frog.
Quoth the frog: “Didn’t you hear me? I’m really a beautiful princess. If you kiss me, I will love you forever and you will be wealthy beyond your dreams!”
The grad student puts the frog back into his pocket, only to once again hear the muffled screams.
“Look, man,” the frog screamed, “what will it take to convince you that I’m telling the truth?”
The student replied, “I believe you, but I’m a grad student. I don’t have time for a girlfriend…but a talking frog is cool!”
Here’s one of my favorite engineering jokes:
Three engineers meet for a drink and begin to discuss what kind of engineer God must be. The electrical engineer pointed to the human nervous system as proof that God was an EE. The mechanical engineer argued, based on the muscular/skelatal structure that God must be an ME. The civil engineer disagreed, and argued that human design proved that God must be a CE. “After all,” he said, “who else would run a waste pipe through a recreational area?”
Finally, here’s an anecdote I heard on the eve of my defense. Whenever some chemistry prof sat on a physics PhD comittee, he would always ask the candidate this question:
Say you work for the ATF and have a tip on a local illegal moonshiner. You don’t find a still, but you do find a jar of pure ethanol in the man’s possession. “I didn’t make this illegally,” he pleads. I’m a petroleum engineer. This ethanol is a by-product of oil distillation. I keep it as a novelty item.”
How can you definitively test his claim?
(This should be an easy one for the very smart folks here. I always ask it of chemists, and they usually don’t get the correct answer.)
Why wasn’t Heisenberg’s love life with his wife so good?
When he had the energy, he didn’t have the time, and when he had the time…
Mr. Upright: Check for bits of crude oil in the ethanol due to fractional distillation being unable to completely purify it?
Two fermions walk into a bar.
The bartender asks, “So, what’ll it be.”
The first one says, “I’ll have a gin and tonic.”
The second one replies, “Dammit, that’s what I wanted!”
(hope nobody’s told that one yet)
Sorry Jeff, it’s “pure” ethanol.
You’re right that it’s not actually possible to get it, from either fractional distillation of crude or distillation of grain alcohol. (And it won’t stay pure once it is exposed to moisture in the air!)
However, our evil examiner gets to set the hypotheticals. You’re the terrified candidate.
Try again? (I’ll post a subtle hint if necessary.)
Check the isotope ratio? Ethanol from modern plants should have more carbon 14 than ethanol from plants that died a few hundred million years ago.
That’s right, Ross! You carbon date it. The hint I was going to give was to ask why a chemistry prof. would think a physics student should find it relevant.
ThePolynomial: Two fermions walk into a bar…
That’s a new one on me, and it’s ridiculously dorky. I love it.
I. Asimov had suggested a test for a chemist:
Ask them to pronouce the word: UNIONIZED
If they say un ionized, they are a chemist.
I came up with a math version:
INVALID
Is there a physics version?
Penny
Scott Simmons,
Roy Glauber told a slightly different version of the lightbulb story at his speech during the Nobel banquet:
Three. One to hold the bulb, one to turn the ladder, and one to figure out the projective representations of the rotation group.
I don’t know if the king appreciated the joke.
Here’s another light bulb joke:
Q: How many pre-meds does it take to change a light bulb?
A: One, and she wonders why it’s not sufficient to earn an A in physics.
Variations:
———-
A: Three. One to do it, one to pull the chair out from under him, and another to ask if this is going to be on the exam.
A: What? How are we supposed to know that? Sure, it was covered in the reading assignment, but you never worked an example in class!
———-
Can you guess what I teach? Given those jokes, no wonder doctors make “physics face”. Don’t get me wrong — I acually like and respect most of my students, but I have to giggle at the stereotypes.