User:TheSeer/Archives/Science humour

Science humour, like math humour is a branch of professional humour. There are several types of jokes within the field.

Humour about science

 * Heisenberg is driving along the Autobahn and gets pulled over. The policeman asks, "Excuse me, sir, do you know how fast you were going?" Heisenberg responds, "Not at all, but I know precisely where I am."

This is a reference to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, which states that an observer cannot know both the location and velocity of a particle with infinite precision.


 * Two scientists are sitting in a bar. A blonde walks by them and one of the scientists sighs "Why are blondes so attractive?"
 * To this, the friend replies "because they are so dense."

This pun reflects on denser bodies containing more mass than other bodies of the same volume. The denser bodies then exhibit a greater gravitational attraction. Dense is, in many dialects of English, also synonymous with stupid, a trait often ascribed in blonde jokes.


 * An atom is walking down the street when he meets a friend of his, who is evidently distraught. "What's the matter...is everything OK?" the atom asks his friend.  "Well, I think I might have lost an electron," responds the other atom.  "Are you sure?" asks the first.  "I'm positive!" replies his friend.

This is a reference to the electron, an atomic particle, which possesses a negative charge. When an initially neutral atom loses an electron, it becomes an ion and acquires a positive charge.

Calculations and proofs
One important aspect of science jokes involves lateral thinking. For example, a student who, when asked to measure the height of a building using a barometer, might see how long it takes for it to fall from the top, rather than measuring the air pressure differential between the top and the bottom.

Other aspects of science humour are based around complex calculations or proofs which may combine observed phenomena/accepted science and mythology, folklore, or popular logical fallacies. These include:
 * Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex, Larry Niven's essay about how Superman could procreate
 * Properties of Hell.
 * Santa's speed on Christmas Eve.
 * Thiotimoline, a fictitious chemical compound described by Isaac Asimov

Hoaxes
Elaborate proofs, when promulgated, can lead to hoaxes. It is important to discern that some hoaxes are intended to be jokes, whereas others are meant to be taken seriously. Others still may be social critiques (such as the Sokal Affair). As there may be difficulty in understanding the intent, some humorous hoaxes may even be taken as serious developments, leading to severe repercussions. One of the better known humorous hoaxes is the dihydrogen monoxide hoax.

Humour/stereotypes about scientists
Scientist jokes are jokes about scientists themselves, especially rivalries between different branches of science. Often they are in-jokes, ie - they tend to circulate within the scientific community itself, rather than be told by outsiders.


 * A physicist, a mathematician, and an engineer are sitting around and one of them says "It says here that Professor X has come up with a new theorem that all odd numbers greater than 2 are prime". Each person present thinks to himself:
 * Mathematician: 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, the rest follows by Mathematical induction.
 * Physicist: 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 is an experimental error, 11 is prime...
 * Engineer: 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 is approximately prime, 11 is prime, 13 is prime ...
 * Mechanical engineer: 3 is prime, 4 is prime, 5 is prime, 6 is prime...
 * Computer engineer: 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 7 is prime, 7 is prime...

This joke plays on the perception of different fields of science, especially differences between hard science and engineering


 * A mathematician, a biologist and a physicist are sitting in a street café watching people entering and leaving the house on the other side of the street. First they see two people going into the house. Time passes. After a while they notice three persons coming out of the house. The physicist says, "The measurement wasn't accurate." The biologist says, "They must have reproduced." The mathematician says, "If one more person enters the house then it will be empty."

This joke relies on the fact that different disciplines take different approaches to mathematics; in particular, the mathematician sees no problem with there being a negative number of people in the house.


 * An engineer, a physicist, and a mathematician are in a train and see a Scottish pasture with a black sheep in it. The physicist says "All Scottish sheep are black." The engineer says "At least one Scottish sheep is black." The mathematician says "In Scotland, there exists at least one field, which has at least one sheep, of which at least one side is black."

This joke again deals with the different burdens of proof used by different fields.

Some scientist jokes involve pick-up lines, and are often associated with scientists and engineers. 

Visual humour
As in other fields of humour, some jokes are conveyed verbally, others are conveyed visually. Television series such as Futurama and Tripping the Rift often use such visual humour, such as Klein's Beer, based on the Klein bottle in topology.

Science humour in fiction
Elaborate science humour is often worked into science fiction parodies, such as the works of Douglas Adams, Isaac Asimov, etc. It may explain something confusing in this universe, or the mechanics of another using scientific reasoning. Terry Pratchett wrote a lengthy exposition about the "sluggishness of light" in "The Colour of Magic", regarding the speed of light in his Discworld. Adams wrote, in describing his Babel Fish: The Babel fish is small, yellow and leechlike, and probably the oddest thing in the Universe. It feeds on brainwave energy received not from its own carrier but from those around it. It absorbs all unconscious mental frequencies from this brainwave energy to nourish itself with. It then excretes into the mind of its carrier a telepathic matrix formed by combining the conscious thought frequencies with nerve signals picked up from the speech centres of the brain which has supplied them. The practical upshot of all this is that if you stick a Babel fish in your ear you can instantly understand anything said to you in any form of language. The speech patterns you actually hear decode the brainwave matrix which has been fed into your mind by your Babel fish.