Hmmm, Scientists...
(This list was compiled by Lars Olofsson.)
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A Mathematician, a Biologist and a
Physicist are sitting in a street
cafe
watching people going in and coming out of 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: "The measurement wasn't
accurate.".
The Biologists conclusion: "They have reproduced".
The Mathematician: "If now exactly 1 person enters the house then it
will
be empty again."
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What do you get when you put a spinning
flywheel in a casket and
turn a corner?
A funeral precession
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A physicist, an engineer and a
mathematician were all in a hotel
sleeping when a fire broke out in their respective rooms.
The physicist woke up, saw the fire,
ran over to his desk, pulled
out his CRC, and began working out all sorts of fluid dynamics
equations. After a couple minutes, he threw down his pencil,
got
a graduated cylinder out of his suitcase, and measured out a
precise amount of water. He threw it on the fire, extinguishing
it, with not a drop wasted, and went back to sleep.
The engineer woke up, saw the fire, ran
into the bathroom, turned
on the faucets full-blast, flooding out the entire apartment,
which put out the fire, and went back to sleep.
The mathematician woke up, saw the
fire, ran over to his desk,
began working through theorems, lemmas, hypotheses , you -name-it,
and after a few minutes, put down his pencil triumphantly and
exclaimed, "I have *proven* that I *can* put the fire out!"
He then went back to sleep.
**************
The graduate with a Science degree
asks, "Why does it work?"
The graduate with an Engineering degree asks, "How does it work?"
The graduate with an Accounting degree asks, "How much will it cost?"
The graduate with a Liberal Arts degree asks, "Do you want mustard
with
that?"
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A lecturer tells some students to learn the phone-book by heart.
The mathematicians are baffled: `By
heart? You kidding?'
The physics-students ask: `Why?'
The engineers sigh: `Do we have to?'
The chemistry-students ask: `Till next Monday?'
The accounting-students (scribbling): `Till tomorrow?'
The laws-students answer: `We already have.'
The medicine-students ask: `Should we start on the Yellow Pages?'
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A Physicist, an astronomer and a
mathematician are walking one day through
the Scottish Highlands, when they chance to see a black sheep.
"Ah!" says the astronomer, "that shows that scottish sheep are black."
"No, come on, you can't say that from a
single observation," says the
physicist, "all you can say is that black sheep are found in Scotland."
"No," says the mathematician, "all you
can say from this observation
is that
from the angle we are looking at it, at this point in time, this
particular
sheep, APPEARS to be black."
**************
Three men with degrees in mathmatics,
physics and biology are locked
up in dark rooms for research reasons.
A week later the researchers open the a
door, the biologist steps out
and reports: `Well, I sat around until I started to get bored, then
I searched the room and found a tin which I smashed on the floor.
There was food in it which I ate when I got hungry. That's it.'
Then they free the man with the degree
in physics and he says:
`I walked along the walls to get an image of the room's geometry, then
I searched it. There was a metal cylinder at five feet into the room
and two feet left of the door. It felt like a tin and I threw it at
the left wall at the right angle and velocity for it to crack open.'
Finally, the researchers open the third
door and hear a faint voice
out of the darkness: `Let C be an open can.'
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It takes two general relativists to
change a light bulb. One holds
the bulb, while the other rotates the universe.
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How do you prove that all odd numbers are prime ? Depends who you ask ...
Logician:
Hypothesis: All odd numbers are prime
Proof:
1) If a proof exists, then the hypothesis must be
true
2) The proof exists; you're reading it now.
From 1 and 2 follows that all odd numbers are prime
Physicist:
3 is a prime
5 is a prime
7 is a prime
9 is not prime, experimental
error
Mathematician:
3 is a prime
5 is a prime
7 is a prime
by induction all the rest
are prime
Engineer:
3 is a prime
5 is a prime
7 is a prime
9 is a prime
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Organic chemistry is the study of
carbon compounds,
biochemistry is the study of carbon compounds that wriggle.
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Ivan Ivanovich, great russian Scientist
does an experiment. He wants
to know how fast a thermometer falls down. He takes a thermometer and
a light, a candle light. He drops both from the 3rd floor and
recognices
that they are reaching the ground at the same time. Ivan Ivanovich,
great
russian scientific writes in his book: A theomometer falls with the
speed
of light.
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In a forest a fox bumps into a little
rabbit, and says, "Hi, junior,
what
are you up to?"
"I'm writing a dissertation on how rabbits eat foxes," said the rabbit.
"Come now, friend rabbit, you know that's impossible!"
"Well, follow me and I'll show you."
They both go into the rabbit's dwelling
and after a while the rabbit
emerges
with a satisfied expression on his face.
Along comes a wolf. "Hello, what are we doing these days?"
"I'm writing the second chapter of my thesis, on how rabbits devour wolves."
"Are you crazy? Where is your academic honesty?"
"Come with me and I'll show you." ......
As before, the rabbit comes out with a
satisfied look on his face
and this time he has a diploma in his paw.
The camera pans back and into the
rabbit's cave and, as everybody should
have guessed by now, we see an enourmous mean-looking lion
sitting
next
to the bloody and furry remains of the wolf and the fox.
The moral of this story is:
It's not the contents of your thesis
that are important --
it's your PhD advisor that counts.
**************
The engineer thinks of his equations as
an approximation to reality.
The physicist thinks reality is an approximation to his equations.
The mathematician doesn't care.
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A theory is something nobody believes,
except the person who made it.
An experiment is something everybody believes, except the person who
made it.
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A student is sitting his Physics exam,
and quite an important one at
that---maybe his final degree paper or his Oxford Entrance.
Anyway, one of the questions on the paper was to the effect of:
``Q: How could one measure the height
of a building using a
barometer?''
Being a wit, in the exam this chap puts:
``A: Drop the barometer from the top of
the building and time its
descent. Using the formula `s = ut + a(t^2)/2' and knowing `a'
which
is `g' we can calculate the height of the building with reasonable
accuracy.'' He then goes on to describe in more detail the method
he
would use.
The examiners were a little
concerned. Here was one of their star
students giving an answer they hadn't at all expected.
So they decided to call him in and give
him an oral test to decide
whether or not to allow the answer which they did admit was perfectly
valid.
So they called him in and told him he
had 15 minutes to make his case.
For ten minutes he said nothing but scribbled away furiously.
After
these ten minutes the atmosphere was getting a little tense---this
was
meant to be an oral after all, and his degree (or whatever) depended
on
it. When they pointed this out to him he said that he was just
trying
to get his thoughts in order as there were so many possible solutions.
Here are some of the ones he came up with:
``1: What you wanted me to do, of
course, was measure air pressure at
the top and bottom of the building, and from the difference and knowing
the pressure exerted by a column of air of unit height I should be
able
to calculate the height of the building. But I thought that would
be
terribly inaccurate and the answer I gave in the exam and the following
ones are all potentially more accurate.
2: Measure the length of shadow cast by
the bulding and by the
barometer on a sunny day. Knowing the actual height of the
barometer
one can compute the height of the building.
3: Tie the barometer to the end of a
long bit of string and lower the
barometer from the top of the building to the ground. Measure
the
amount of string payed out and you have the height of the building.''
He then gave several more but ended with:
``The best method by far, though,
would be to go to the building's
janitor and say `If I give you this shiny new scientific barometer
will
you tell me how high this building is?' ''
The student passed his exam.
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Q: How many computer scientists does it take to change a light-bulb ?
A: None. It's a hardware problem,
so they'll call an engineer,
and
get him to do it.
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- "Have you heard about the object-oriented way to become wealthy?"
- "No..."
- "Inheritance."
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Logic is a systematic method for
getting the wrong conclusion...
with confidence.
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Heisenberg might have slept here.
Moebius always does it on the same side.
Statisticians probably do it
Algebraists do it in groups.
(Logicians do it) or [not (logicians do it)].
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Mathematics is the systematic misuse of
a nomenclature developed for
that
1specific purpose.
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Three men, a physicist, a engineer and
a computer scientist, are travelling
in a car. Suddenly, the car starts to smoke and stops. The three
atonished
men try to solve the problem:
- The physicist says: This is
obviously a classic problem of
torque. It
has been overloaded the elasticity limit of the main axis.
- Engineer says : Let's be
serious! The matter is that it has
been burned
the spark of the connecting rod to the dynamo of the
radiator. I can easily repair it by hammering.
- Computer scientist says : What
if we get off the car, wait
a minute,
and then get in and try again?
**************
TWO sodium atoms are walking down the
road chatting. All
of a sudden, one
stops and turns to its friend looking worried:
Na(1)- "Oh No... I think I've lost an Electron!"
Na(2)- "What... are you sure?"
Na(1)- "Yes, I'm Positive!"
**************
A mathematician and a physicist agree
to a psychological experiment.
The mathematician is put in a chair in a large empty room and a
beautiful naked woman is placed on a bed at the other end of the room.
The psychologist explains, "You are to remain in your chair.
Every
five minutes, I will move your chair to a position halfway between
its
current location and the woman on the bed." The mathematician
looks
at the psychologist in disgust. "What? I'm not going to go
through
this. You know I'll never reach the bed!" And he gets up
and storms
out. The psychologist makes a note on his clipboard and ushers
the
physicist in. He explains the situation, and the physicist's
eyes
light up and he starts drooling. The psychologist is a bit
confused.
"Don't you realize that you'll never reach her?" The physicist
smiles
and replied, "Of course! But I'll get close enough for all
practical
purposes!"
**************
Dean, to the physics department.
"Why do I always have to give
you
guys so much money, for laboratories and expensive equipment and
stuff. Why couldn't you be like the math department - all they
need
is money for pencils, paper and waste-paper baskets. Or even
better,
like the philosophy department. All they need are pencils and
paper."
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When considering the behaviour of a howitzer:
A mathematician will be able to calculate where the shell will land.
A physicist will be able to explain how the shell gets there.
An engineer will stand there and try to catch it.
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A Limerick:
((12 + 144 + 20 + (3 * 4^(1/2))) / 7) + (5 * 11) = 9^2 + 0
Translation:
A Dozen, a Gross and a Score,
plus three times the square root of four,
divided by seven,
plus five times eleven,
equals nine squared and not a bit more.
**************
An engineer, a mathematician, and a
physicist went to the races one
Saturday and laid their money down. Commiserating in the bar
after
the race, the engineer says, "I don't understand why I lost all my
money. I measured all the horses and calculated their strength
and
mechanical advantage and figured out how fast they could run..."
The physicist interrupted him: "...but
you didn't take individual
variations into account. I did a statistical analysis of their
previous performances and bet on the horses with the highest
probability of winning..."
"...so if you're so hot why are you
broke?" asked the engineer.
But
before the argument can grow, the mathematician takes out his pipe
and
they get a glimpse of his well-fattened wallet. Obviously here
was a
man who knows something about horses. They both demanded to know
his
secret.
"Well," he says, between puffs on the
pipe, "first I assumed all the
horses were identical and spherical..."
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A statistician can have his head in an
oven and his feet in ice, and
he will say that on the average he feels fine.
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Einstein dies and goes to heaven only
to be informed that his room is
not yet ready. "I hope you will not mind waiting in a
dormitory.
We
are very sorry, but it's the best we can do and you will have to share
the room with others." he is told by the doorman (say his name is
Pete). Einstein says that this is no problem at all and that
there is
no need to make such a great fuss. So Pete leads him to the dorm.
They enter and Albert is introduced to all of the present
inhabitants. "See, Here is your first room mate. He has
an IQ of
180!"
"Why that's wonderful!" Says Albert. "We can discuss
mathematics!"
"And here is your second room mate. His IQ is 150!"
"Why that's wonderful!" Says Albert. "We can discuss physics!"
"And here is your third room mate. His IQ is 100!"
"That Wonderful! We can discuss the latest plays at the theater!"
Just then another man moves out to capture Albert's hand and shake
it.
"I'm your last room mate and I'm sorry, but my IQ is only 80."
Albert smiles back at him and says, "So, where do you think interest
rates are headed?"