Science humour

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

Contents

[edit] 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, "No, but I know where I am."

This is a reference to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, which states that an observer cannot know the location and velocity of a quantum at any given point in time. A second aspect to the joke is that the German Autobahn does not observe speed limits.

Q:Why are blondes so attractive?
A:Because they're so dense.

This 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.

[edit] 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. [1]

Other aspects of science humour are based around complex calculations or proofs which may combine oberved phenomena/accepted science and mythology, folklore, or popular logical fallacies. These include:

[edit] 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. Some of the better known humorous hoaxes include:

[edit] Humour/stereotypes about scientists

Main article at Scientist jokes

A mathematician, a biologist and a physicist are sitting in a street café 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 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."

[edit] 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.

Klein's Beer bottles in Futurama
Klein's Beer bottles in Futurama

[edit] 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 universe. 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. ”


[edit] See also

[edit] External links

  • Professional jokes, A large collection of jokes about professions: programmers, mathematicians, philosophers, physicists, engineers, doctors, lawyers, accountants, psychiatrists etc.

[edit] References

  1. ^ The Barometer Problem.
  2. ^ Hellfire.
  3. ^ The Physics of Santa and His Reindeer.
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