Jokes about scientists and science. A moment of humor from the world of science: jokes that only scientists will understand Scientists' jokes
The older an archaeologist's wife gets, the more he likes her
Stealing one person's thoughts is plagiarism. For many - scientific research
Scientists have found a gene that is responsible for scientists' desire to find genes
Diaries of D.I. Mendeleev discovered! It turns out that at different times he dreamed not only of the periodic table of elements, but also of the electrolysis of kefir, the diagram of the Tauras TV, the parliament of the Republic of Bashkortostan and much more of that kind, but each time the scientist woke up in great bewilderment.
Scientists have invented a new atomic weapon. After testing at the conference, correspondents ask:
Tell me, according to your estimates, what was the power of the explosion?
From 10 to 100 kilotons.
Why is there such a wide range in assessments?
Well, at first we thought - 10 kilotons, but it’s like a bang!!!
A family of engineers.
He: - If you wrap the entire earth with copper wire in several layers, you will get a good alternating current generator...
Are you drunk again? Not variable, but constant!
The magazine "Chemistry and Life" began publishing culinary recipes.
Meet Vasya. He studies red blood cells.
Yes, I study red blood cells, my father studied red blood cells, my grandfather studied red blood cells. You see, red blood cells are in our blood.
British scientists have invented a device with which you can easily pass through walls, calling the invention a door.
Scientists discovered that dinosaurs were intelligent creatures, engaged in agriculture, kept a calendar, and had their own written language, state and science. The excavations even found a recording of a T-Rex speaking at the dinosaur UN. In his speech, he said that these genetic experiments on mammals will not lead to any good.
Einstein once wrote to Charlie Chaplin:
Your film "Gold Rush" is understood all over the world, and you will certainly become a great person.
To which Chaplin replied:
I admire you even more. Nobody in the world understands your theory of relativity, but you still became a great man!...
When Niels Bohr spoke at the Lebedev Physical Institute of the USSR, he was asked how he managed to create such a first-class school of physicists. Bohr replied: “Apparently because I was never embarrassed to admit to my students that I was a fool...” Bohr translated E.M. Lifshits did it this way: “Apparently, because I was never embarrassed to tell my students that they were fools...” There was excitement in the audience, since some people still knew the language. Lifshits asked again Bohr, apologized for the slip and gave the correct translation. However, academician P. L. Kapitsa, who was sitting in the hall, noted that this was not an accidental slip: “It actually expresses the fundamental difference between the schools of Bohr and Landau.” (E. M. Lifshits belonged to the school Landau.)
One day, the famous Italian physicist Enrico Fermi was late for a meeting of the Italian Academy of Sciences and left in his Fiat in the same suit in which he worked in his laboratory. That is, he did not have the robes and cocked hat required in such cases. Naturally, the carabinieri at the entrance blocked his path. Then he introduced himself as “the driver of His Excellency Professor Fermi” and was let through.
Once Paul Dirac gave a report on the current state of quantum mechanics. After finishing the report, he asked: “Any questions?” One of those present said: “I don’t understand how you got that expression.” Dirac replied: “This is a statement, not a question. Any questions?”
Paul Dirac once attended a seminar in which the speaker, after a long presentation, discovered that his final expression had the wrong sign. The speaker peered at what was written for a long time, and then said: “I mixed up the sign somewhere.” Dirac immediately corrected him from his seat: “You mean in an odd number of places.”
A person who is not at least partly humorous is only partly human.
Gilbert Chesterton
British scientists once proved that one minute of laughter prolongs life by five minutes. American scientists made an amendment, indicating that logically one minute spent laughing should be subtracted from the result, so life is extended by only four minutes. And only Russian scientists have officially declared that laughter for no reason is a sign of... mental retardation. One way or another, scientists all over the world love to joke and laugh. Their jokes are often difficult to understand and even more difficult to appreciate, but you can’t deny their wit. The ability to laugh at scientists’ jokes is also a whole science. In five lectures we will master it, and also significantly extend our lives.
Lecture 1. What the hunter doesn’t know
In those distant times, when the grass was greener, mammoths roamed it, and people suffered terribly without Google and Wikipedia, it was difficult to learn all these sophisticated formulas that scientists came up with. Then students and their teachers began to compose mnemonic phrases in the spirit of acrostics, where the initial letters of each line of a verse form a meaningful text. And here a huge field for the manifestation of wit opened up.
The most famous mnemonic phrase is “Every hunter wants to know where the pheasant sits.” With its help, it is easy to remember the order of colors in the optical part of the solar spectrum: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet. There are other options, more exotic: “How Jean the Bell-Ringer once tore down a lantern with his head,” “The cat sewed blue sweatshirts for a donkey, a giraffe, and a bunny,” “Every educated woman has breakfast with hot raw meatballs,” “The quark is surrounded by a hot curtain of gluons that create fluids.” " A more modern version is becoming increasingly common: “Every designer wants to know where to download Photoshop.”
But it’s not just the colors of the spectrum that need to be memorized. There are also tougher nuts to crack. For example, how to remember the spectral classes of stars according to the Harvard Observatory classification - O, B, A, F, G, K, M? It’s very simple - just learn the phrase once: “One shaved Englishman chewed dates like carrots.” If you also need to remember additional spectral classes W, R, N, S, then the phrase takes on an expanded form: “Imagine: one shaved Englishman chewed dates like carrots - isn’t it funny?” By the way, our Sun belongs to the “chewed” class.
One shaved Englishman chewed dates like carrots
Astronomers themselves, however, come up with more complex combinations that are understandable only to initiates. For example: “Oh, Boris Alexandrovich chewed dates like carrots” or “Oh, Boris Alexandrovich! Physicists are waiting for the end of the torment.” We are talking here about the famous astronomer Boris Aleksandrovich Vorontsov-Velyaminov, who, among other things, is also known for his astronomy textbook for high school.
In a similar way, you can remember the location of the planets of the solar system: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto. Here are options for mnemonic phrases to choose from: “We will meet tomorrow, my young companion, at a new planet”, “We all know: many young marmots learn the names of the planets”, “The sea wolf tortured the young cabin boy, completely tiring the unfortunate teenager.” , astronomers have made life incredibly difficult for high school students!
We know everything: many young marmots learn the names of the planets
Scientists from other fields resort to the same technique. For example, biologists remember the sequence of seven main taxonomic categories like this: “Royal (kingdom) mansion (type) whoever (class) opens (detachment), immediately (family) knight (genus) will return (species).” And paleontologists, in order to master the sequence of geological periods, came up with a completely hooligan memorization book: “Every (Cambrian) excellent (Ordovician) student (Silurian) should (Devonian) smoke (Carboniferous) cigarettes (Permian); you (Triassic), Jura (Jurassic), small (Cretaceous) - go (Paleogene) find (Neogene) plane tree (Quaternary).”
Every excellent student should smoke cigarettes; You, Yura, are small - go find a plane tree
However, astronomical or biological mnemonics are mere nonsense compared to chemical ones. Here you can’t get by with the simplest phrases; you need to come up with whole stories. This is how, for example, you should remember the elements of the periodic table: “Native water (hydrogen) was mixed with gel (helium) to pour (lithium). Yes, take it and pour it (beryllium) into the pine forest (boron), where from under the corner of the native (carbon) the Asian (nitrogen) peeks out, and with such a sour face (oxygen) that you didn’t want to look again (fluorine). But it was not he (neon) that we needed, so we moved three (sodium) meters away and ended up in Magnolia (magnesium), where Alya in a mini (aluminum) skirt was smeared with cream (silicon) containing phosphorus (phosphorus) so that she would stop to be gray (sulphur). After that, Alya took bleach (chlorine) and washed the Argonauts’ ship (argon).”
I don’t know about you, but it’s easier for me to learn the table itself than this ancient Greek dregs with sour Asians and faces smeared with cream.
And the first place in brevity and wit is occupied by physicists. Their phrases, invented for memorizing laws and formulas, truly delight with their inner spark of madness. Archimedes' Law: “A body thrust into water bulges out with the force of the water pushed out by the body stuck there.” Archimedes' formula: “Rozha - Vo!” Newton's three laws: “If you don't kick, it won't fly.” The way you kick it, it will fly. As you kick, so will you get.” Root mean square speed of thermal motion of a particle: “Three cats for meat.” Pre-exponential factor in the Maxwell distribution: "Milk for two lousy cats."
Physicists generally love to mock cats, as we will see in the next lecture.
Cat and demons
(Web comic by Elena Pavlova)
Characters
Laplace's Demon. This is the hero of Pierre-Simon Laplace's thought experiment, a demon capable of recognizing its evolution both in the future and in the past based on the current position and speed of each particle in the Universe. Laplace invented this creature to clearly demonstrate the degree of our ignorance and the need for a statistical description of some real processes in the world around us.
Erwin Schrödinger put this cat in a box with a “hellish machine”, the operation of which depends on the decay of a single atom, which within an hour can both react and remain stable. Thus, for an external observer who does not know whether decay has occurred, the cat is both alive and dead - that is, it is in a state of superposition (mixing of options).
The hero of James Maxwell's experiment, covering a jumper in a container, one half of which contains only hot molecules, and the other - only cold ones. Due to its properties, Maxwell's demon allows only cold particles to pass in one direction, and only hot ones in the other, which soon leads to heating of one side and cooling of the other, that is, to a violation of the second law of thermodynamics.
Lecture 2. Spherical animals in a vacuum
The twentieth century is the century of physicists. For more than a hundred years, they came up with so many crazy concepts and theories that no one would have believed them if they hadn’t exploded an atomic bomb, lit a laser, and launched the Internet to confirm their words. It is clear that such creative people could not resist enriching the world with a mass of jokes, anecdotes, jokes and amusing paradoxes.
To isolate the essence of physical humor, you need to remember a classic joke. The Bookmakers Association hired a biologist, a mathematician, and a physicist to find a scientific way to predict horse racing results, and gave each one a million dollars for a year of research. A year has passed in the labors of the righteous - reports are coming. The biologist reports: “I have developed a technique with which, knowing the pedigrees of horses and studying the data of their genetic analysis, you can predict the result with a probability of up to 90%.” The mathematician reports: “I have developed a technique with which, knowing the statistics of horse racing for the year, the number of spectators in the stands, the amount of bets and the color of the groom’s eyes, you can predict the result with a probability of 96%.” The physicist states: “I need another ten million dollars, a laboratory, a staff of assistants and five years of time. In the meantime, I have developed a model of a spherical horse in a vacuum.”
Physicists do not live in a vacuum and understand perfectly well: the essence of their modern concepts is so far from everyday life that it is difficult to comprehend. Therefore, they often go for deliberate simplification, coming up with beautiful metaphors and witty illustrations. The horse has become a kind of metaphor for simplification to ideal conditions, which are often used in scientific theories, but are rarely observed in reality. There was even a joke on this topic: “One horsepower is equal to the force that changes the speed of an absolutely black spherical horse in a vacuum with a mass of one kilogram and a volume of one liter in one second by one meter per second.” By the way, in the English version of the joke it is not a spherical horse that appears, but a spherical cow - and what is being discussed, of course, is not winning the races, but increasing the milk yield of farm cows.
Another favorite animal of physicists was Schrödinger's cat. He, or rather her (in the original article, written in German, the cat was mentioned), was invented by the scientist Erwin Schrödinger to illustrate “the incompleteness of quantum mechanics in the transition from subatomic to macroscopic systems.” His thought experiment looked like this. A certain cat (cat) is locked in an impenetrable box along with a “hellish machine”, inside of which there is a Geiger counter and a tiny amount of radioactive substance that can decay from minute to minute. If this happens, the counter will register the decay and give a signal to the hammer, which will break the flask with hydrocyanic acid, and the hydrocyanic acid, in turn, will instantly poison the cat.
Wanted: Schrödinger's cat for gross violation of the principles of quantum superposition.
Alive and dead. Last seen when the box was closed
Erwin Schrödinger is not at all a sadist, as you might think after reading his experiment. And I didn’t put a real cat in a box. He needed such a strange image to demonstrate effects that are common in the quantum world, but have no analogues in the reality we are familiar with. If the box is closed, we cannot tell whether the cat is alive or dead. If it's open, we know for sure. It is in this state of “uncertainty” (superposition) that the quantum world exists, and certainty can only be restored by direct observation.
Despite its clarity, Schrödinger’s idea seemed so crazy to scientists that it is still criticized to this day. The famous modern physicist Stephen Hawking once exclaimed: “When I hear about Schrödinger’s cat, my hand reaches for a gun!” The fact is that the example of Schrödinger’s cat shows the dependence of objective processes on a subjective view of them. So physicists came up with the “quantum suicide” thought experiment, looking at the problem from the point of view of a “cat.” For an external observer, there are two states of a cat - either alive or dead. For the poor fellow himself, the situation is different: if he dies, then the possibility of interpreting reality will disappear for him - either he understands that he has found himself in a universe where the isotope did not decay, or he no longer understands anything. It turns out that from the point of view of the occupant of the box himself, he is immortal! It is clear that in reality it is difficult for us to imagine this: cats and cats, alas, die - but the quantum world is structured somewhat differently.
Operating principle
anti-gravity device "Cat with Butter"
Physicists came up with another mocking experiment on poor animals by combining two well-known principles: “A sandwich always falls with its face down” and “A cat always lands on its paws.” The result is the “butter cat paradox” - if you tie a butter sandwich on a cat’s back, it will not land, demonstrating anti-gravity. The cat's fall will slow down, it will begin to spin, trying to land on its paws, but at the same time, on the butter of the sandwich; eventually it should reach a stable state, hanging close to the ground and spinning at high speed. This, however, is only possible in a vacuum, otherwise, according to the law of conservation of energy, the resistance of the air to rotation must exhaust the gravitational energy of the fall. There is also an idea how to extract energy from this rotation - using the so-called “cat sandwich generator”.
Another popular character for physical jokes is Maxwell's demon. It was coined by James Maxwell to illustrate “the apparent paradox of the Second Law of Thermodynamics.” The scientist imagined a vessel divided by an internal impenetrable wall with a hole in it. In the hole there is a device (“demon”) that separates “cold” molecules from “hot” ones. As a result, one part of the vessel will heat up and the other will cool down without additional energy supply, which will lead to a violation of the Second Law. The demon has become very popular among science fiction writers. For example, in NIICHAVO from the Strugatskys’ story “Monday Begins on Saturday,” Maxwell’s demons open and close the entrance doors of the institute. The demon is also found in the works of Lem, Snegov, and even fantasy author Christopher Stasheff.
Maxwell's Demon Isn't So Sinister
Of course, Maxwell's demon cannot exist on its own - just like a spherical horse. Nevertheless, some semblance of it can be created for a short time and without violating fundamental laws if you provide the “demon” with feedback. This is exactly the path taken by Japanese physicists, who in 2010 managed to make a hypothetical “demon” real.
One should not think that the interests of scientists are reduced to spherical horses in a vacuum. From time to time they get carried away with even crazier ideas that seem to have no practical meaning. We will talk about them in the next lecture.
Physicists joke
In 1966, the Mir publishing house published the book “Physicists Are Joking,” which was compiled by Obninsk scientists on the initiative of Valentin Turchin. He was a very witty person and led the local KVN team. It is not surprising that he was the first to come up with the idea of collecting all kinds of scientific jokes, anecdotes, and parody articles, mostly translated, and publishing them under one cover. Although at first the fate of the book did not work out (Soviet censors were afraid of something and withdrew it from wide sale), the popularity of the collection was such that two years later Mir published another book - “Physicists Continue Joking.”
Both books are truly distinguished by their sparkling humor, which is understandable even to the uninitiated and is still relevant. Take, for example, the “Instructions for Readers of Scientific Articles,” which allows you to understand what scientists actually mean by some of the tricky phrases in their works.
“It is well known that...” - I didn’t bother to find a link to the work in which this was mentioned for the first time.
“It has enormous theoretical and practical significance” - I personally find this interesting.
“Since it was not possible to answer all these questions at once...” - The experiment failed, but I will still do the printed work.
“First, let’s lay out the theory...” - All the calculations that I managed to do last night.
“Obviously...” - I haven’t checked this, but...
“This work was completed four years ago...” - I didn’t have any new material for the report, but I really wanted to go to the conference.
Lecture 3. From Nobel to Shnobel
The Nobel Prize is watched all over the world in the same way as Olympic successes. Its presentation is covered by the media, and when it goes to one of our compatriots, the heart is filled with pride. True, those who are proud often cannot really explain why the next laureates received the prize. In sports, everything is simple: the champion overtook his competitors, did the exercise better, performed the exercise more accurately, scored more goals, and the like.
Mathematician Marc Abrahams says that without humor, scientists will go crazy
But why, for example, did Andrei Geim and Konstantin Novoselov receive the prize? They say that for experiments with some kind of graphene... What is graphene? Why is it needed? What do you eat it with? You can’t figure it out without Google!.. Therefore, we have to believe that the Swedes, who manage the Nobel Prize, delved into everything, compared, evaluated the contribution, and the like. So that we, inquisitive amateurs, could feel the difference between a genuine epoch-making discovery and the absurdity that they are trying to pass off as it, in 1991 the “Shameful” Prize was established, which we usually call the “Ig Nobel Prize” (“Comic Nobel Prize”; in the original it is used play on words: Ig Nobel Prize, from the English ignoble - “shameful”). The prize was founded by mathematician Mark Abrahams, known for his humorous short stories, and the journal Annals of Incredible Research, which was conceived as a parody of serious scientific publications.
The Ig Nobel Prize is awarded annually in ten categories at Harvard University. The ceremony goes like this: real Nobel laureates, having put up fake glasses with false noses, fezzes and other comic attributes, come to the large lecture hall of the Sanders Theater at Harvard. Invited guests launch paper airplanes. The time for speeches dedicated to the next award ceremony is limited to one minute. Those who speak longer are stopped by a specially trained girl who capriciously exclaims: “Please stop, it’s boring!” Ig Nobel laureates are presented with a certificate and a prize, which each time has a new look: it can be a medal made of foil or a figurine on a stand. The ceremony is broadcast on American television and radio; it can also be watched live on the official website of the award. A few days after the ceremony, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology hosts informal lectures in which the honorees explain their research.
Scientists have fun: Ig Nobel Prize presentation
Why do they give “Ig Nobel”? Let's look at the list of laureates for 2013. So, in the “Archaeology” category, the award went to the Americans Brian Crandall and Peter Stahl for swallowing a whole shrew (pre-cooked - don’t think bad!) to find out which bones of a small animal are partially digested, and which come out of the predator’s body entirely . In the Astronomy category, the prize was awarded to an international group of scientists who proved that dung beetles find their way home by navigating the Milky Way. In the Mathematics category, the prize went to a group of British scientists (they are always unbeatable!) under the leadership of Bert Tolkamp for two outstanding related discoveries: firstly, the longer a cow lies, the more likely it is that it will get up; secondly, if a cow stands up, then it is very difficult to predict when she will lie down (I wonder if the option of a spherical cow in a vacuum was discussed in this work?). In the Medicine category, the prize was awarded to a Japanese team led by Masateru Ukiyama for their study on the effect of opera music on mice with heart transplants. In the Psychology category, the winner was the group of Lorena Begue from France for their very valuable research on why drunk people consider themselves attractive. And - finally! - in the Physics category, the Italians were awarded the Ig Nobel Prize for their mathematically verified proof that some people could run on the surface of water... on the Moon.
If you think that the achievements and discoveries awarded the Ig Nobel are given to some completely “frostbitten” scientists, then you are deeply mistaken. Their works have been peer-reviewed, published in specialized journals, and meet all criteria of normal scientific work. Moreover, Shnobelevka and Nobelevka periodically intersect. For example, the aforementioned Andre Geim, who received the Nobel Prize for graphene, became an Ig Nobel laureate in 2000 for his study of the levitation of frogs in a magnetic field.
Why do scientists need such “paradoxical” research, the founder of the parody award, Mark Abrahams, explained: “Most of the time, scientists are trying to understand something that no one else can understand. This means that their work is associated with disappointments, sometimes they are ready to bang their heads against the wall. And a sense of humor helps them here.”
We will learn in the next lecture in what other forms the humor of scientists manifests itself.
Einstein jokes
Albert Einstein managed to radically change the physics of the twentieth century, so he is rightfully considered one of the smartest people of the era. His statements also became legendary. Let's remember some of them.
Einstein was visiting his friends. It started to rain. When Einstein was about to leave, he was asked to put on his hat. "For what? - said Einstein. - I knew it would rain, and that's why I didn't put on my hat. After all, it takes longer to dry than my hair. It is obvious".
One friend asked Albert Einstein to call her on the phone, but warned that the number was very difficult to remember: 24361. “What's so difficult about that? - Einstein was surprised. “Two dozen and 19 squared.”
At one of Albert Einstein’s speeches, one woman, in order to show her friends her education, decided to ask him a question: “Could you explain to me the connection between time and eternity?” Einstein: - You see, if I had enough time to explain this to you, it would take you forever to understand it.
Lecture 4. With Futurama around the galaxy
As you know, the popular humorous show KVN (Club of the Cheerful and Resourceful) was originally student entertainment, in which scientific workers also participated. In general, Russian scientists loved to joke, and, studying their legacy today, you see that in every joke there was only... a grain of joke.
Take, for example, the most popular humorous work of the second half of the 1960s - the story “Monday Begins on Saturday” by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, which the authors defined as “A Fairy Tale for Young Scientists.” It is believed that under the guise of NIICHAVO (Research Institute of Witchcraft and Wizardry), the Strugatsky brothers described the staff of the Pulkovo Observatory, as well as some famous scientists of their time. The prototype of Janus Nevstruev was the director of the observatory Alexander Mikhailov, Fedora Kivrina was the science fiction paleontologist Ivan Efremov, Roman Oyry-Oyry was the mathematician and academician Sergei Novikov. Under the guise of the main character, programmer Alexander Privalov, Boris Strugatsky, who worked at the observatory as an operating engineer for computing and analytical machines, was introduced.
The authors very skillfully conveyed the atmosphere of scientific enthusiasm of those times. In addition, their story is full of excellent and very kind humor. Therefore, “Monday...” was doomed to success and was soon sold out for quotes. Here are just a few of them related to science.
""What are you doing?" - I asked. “Like all science,” said the hook-nosed man. - Human happiness."
“It’s nonsense to look for a solution if it already exists. It’s about how to deal with a problem that has no solution.”
"There is probably some limit to the capacity for surprise."
“Every person is a magician at heart, but he becomes a magician only when he begins to think less about himself and more about others, when working becomes more interesting to him than having fun in the ancient sense of the word.”
You can't say better about scientists! And yet, in “Monday...” there is enough caustic satire, castigating (as it was customary to say then) pseudoscientists and plagiarists. The satire became especially caustic in the story “The Tale of Troika,” which is connected with “Monday...” by common characters. The story turned out to be much wittier, but it offended the interests of the bureaucracy, so it was banned for reprinting.
At the same time, innocent jokes like the one invented and implemented by the science fiction writer Kir Bulychev, known in narrow Orientalist circles under his real name Igor Mozheiko, were completely permitted. In the magazine “Knowledge is Power” there was a section “Academy of Fun Sciences”. The name spoke for itself: the column published messages that, in a scientific form, often presented the reader with complete nonsense. For example, once an article appeared in the “Academy...” stating that the giraffe is a mythical creature, because no real animal could have such a long neck. As a result, the editor received hundreds of letters from indignant readers who had personally seen giraffes in zoos and could not understand why a popular science magazine was publishing such nonsense. Kir Bulychev composed a note for the column on behalf of pensioner Lozhkin (a character in his stories from the series about the fantastic city of Great Guslyar), where he argued that walnuts are our brothers in mind, who in the distant past crawled along tree branches and hunted flies, but then chose love over rational activity and merged in eternal unity under the shell. It is noteworthy that some of the readers took this frankly humorous note seriously, promising in their letters that they would never eat walnuts again.
Futurama characters live in the future, but joke about the present
Western scientists felt much freer in the field of humor and satire. And their jokes were actively used in popular culture. Suffice it to recall the famous “Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy” by Douglas Adams, which contains all the most famous paradoxes and original ideas invented by scientists.
Two TV series can be considered a kind of encyclopedia of scientific humor: “Futurama” and “The Big Bang Theory”.
The animated film Futurama started in 1999 and quickly became a cult classic. Almost every episode contains jokes or paradoxes related to mathematics, physics, chemistry and other areas of knowledge. This is explained by the fact that most of the authors of the series have higher education in natural sciences. For example, executive producer Ken Keeler is a doctor of applied mathematics, and producer David Cohen is a master of computer technology. In an interview, Cohen noted that the authors “wanted to bring as much science into the series as possible without interfering with the development of the plot.”
Sheldon Cooper dressed up as a Doppler effect for a masquerade
The comedy series “The Big Bang Theory” appeared later, in 2007, but on already prepared ground: the viewer was accustomed to the fact that the scientists on the screen are not always crackers or nerds, that they can be creative and exciting. Although still not of this world. The series follows the lives of young physicists Sheldon Cooper and Leonard Hofstadter, as well as their friends, astrophysicist Rajesh Koothrappali and engineer Howard Wolowitz. They all work at the California Institute of Technology. The plot revolves around everyday situations where the characters demonstrate fantastic clumsiness, but the series is literally permeated with scientific humor. Moreover, it featured NASA astronauts and such famous scientists as Stephen Hawking, Brian Greene and George Smoot.
A remarkable point: culture absorbs scientific humor like a sponge, changing its attitude towards the most complex problems, and scientists themselves cease to feel the need for external rigor. More and more studies are appearing that are obviously fantastic, but at the same time demonstrate the principles by which cognition develops. For example, not long ago, British scientists (yes, we repeat, they are unrivaled!) studied an important question: if the Moon were made of cheese, as in children's fairy tales, how much would it weigh? It turns out that its mass would increase by one and a half times, which would significantly affect the ebb and flow of the tides. Bon appetit!
The introduction of fantastic assumptions into scientific work allows scientists to take a fresh look at hackneyed ideas and tired topics - they suddenly acquire novelty and fresh sound. But it is important not to cross the line beyond which the idea ceases to be more or less scientific. We will talk about how scientists find this line in the next lecture.
Comic laws
In 1949, Engineer Major Edward Murphy, who was serving at Edwards Air Force Base, where the causes of aircraft accidents were being investigated, one day saw an airplane engine begin to rotate the propeller in the opposite direction, and said something like this: “If there are two ways to do something, and one of them leads to disaster, then someone will choose this particular method.” Murphy's phrase was later reformulated into the universal law of his name: "If there is a chance that any trouble can happen, it will happen."
In fact, this law was known long before Murphy - we call it the “law of meanness,” “the law of the sandwich,” or the “general effect.” However, thanks to the fact that Murphy’s statement was used in the official report of the commission, they started talking about it and began to use it in a variety of fields - from mathematics to philosophy.
Almost immediately, seven corollaries of Murphy’s law were formulated.
1. Everything is not as easy as it seems.
2. Every job takes more time than you think.
3. Of all the possible troubles, the one that causes the most damage will happen.
4. If four causes of possible troubles are eliminated in advance, then there will always be a fifth.
5. Left to their own devices, events tend to go from bad to worse.
6. As soon as you start doing some work, there is another one that needs to be done even earlier.
7. Every solution creates new problems.
In addition to Murphy's law, you can often find other comic laws attributed to famous scientists.
Hanlon's Law: "Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by stupidity."
Pareto's Law: “20% of effort produces 80% of the result, and the remaining 80% of effort produces only 20% of the result.”
Parkinson's Law: “Work fills the time available for it.”
Sturgeon's Law: “Nothing is ever absolutely true.”
Peter's Law: "In any hierarchy, any employee rises to the level of his own incompetence."
Lecture 5. Knowledge is power
British scientists have proven that statements starting with the words “British scientists have proven...” have never been proven by British scientists.
And indeed it is! Although British scientists love to joke and laugh, write parody articles and conduct crazy experiments, they try to stay within the bounds of common sense. Therefore, their opinion remains authoritative in society, and the prestige of science grows. This is where the catch lies - due to the high specialization of individual disciplines, even a very experienced researcher is sometimes unable to accurately determine the value of a particular article, book, or work. Various figures take advantage of this, creating authority for themselves out of nowhere.
The problem became obvious after the “Rooter” scandal. Here is how it was. In 2005, three funny Americans created a program that could generate “scientific articles” from random text, meaningless tables and diagrams. They handed over two completed “articles” to the organizers of the World Conference on Systematics, Cybernetics and Informatics, which was to be held in Florida. One of them, under the monstrous name “Ruter: methodology for typical unification of access points and redundancy,” was accepted for work. The idea could not be kept secret, and the planned report was cancelled. Three years later, a buzz around the same trick arose in Russia - the generated article was translated using an electronic translator, edited and published under the title “Rooter: an algorithm for typical unification of access points and redundancy” in the “Journal of Scientific Publications of Graduate Students and Doctoral Students.” After an impartial discussion of this provocation, the journal was excluded from the list of those recognized by the scientific community.
British scientists have proven that the moon made of cheese weighs more than usual!
As you can see, scientists themselves can easily deal with pseudoscientific and meaningless works. What should we, simple inquisitive laymen, do? After all, almost every day on TV screens, on the Internet, in newspapers, we are told without a shadow of a doubt that British (American, German, Italian, Japanese, Russian and others) scientists have proven that the planet Niburu (a giant comet, a huge asteroid, neutron star and other misfortunes), that people descended from aliens (reptilians, ethereal giants, Atlanteans, Lemurians and other impostors), that a perpetual motion machine (teleportator, levitator, duplicator and other rubbish) will soon be built, that global warming awaits us (global cooling, global flooding, global drought, global extinction and other delights).
How to deal with this? The answer was given by one of the greatest British scientists, Francis Bacon: “Knowledge itself is power!” Of course, you need to learn, fortunately scientists are ready to share knowledge. Of course, you need to be more skeptical about any information, because you could be the victim of an innocent prank or malicious fraud. And, of course, you need to look at what is happening with humor. British scientists have already proven this!
Elementary!
There is a series of translated jokes floating around the Internet about how certain particles enter a bar. The authorship of the jokes cannot be determined, but the jokes illustrate the behavior of these particles with unusual wit.
Tachyon walks into a bar. The bartender told him: “Tachyons are not served!” “It’s strange,” says the tachyon, “but they served us tomorrow.”
(A tachyon is a hypothetical particle that moves faster than the speed of light, and therefore violates the principle of causality, which states that if one event influenced another, the first must always be earlier in time.)
Neutrino walks into a bar. The bartender told him: “Hey, they don’t serve people like you here!” Neutrino replies: “Okay, I’ll just pass here!”
(A neutrino is a particle so small and fast that it can fly through matter without any noticeable interaction with it.)
Have no doubt, most scientists are not boring at all and are extremely cheerful people. They love and know how to joke, and in an intricate and very witty way.
Chemists
"Carefully! Wet floor!” 
Physicists
- How to measure the heroic silushka?
- We need to multiply the mass by the acceleration! 
Somehow the pressure goes from one bar to one bar... 
"I'm irresistible!" - screamed a vertically polarized electromagnetic wave, falling at Brewster's angle onto a horizontal glass surface. 
Physicists have a tradition: once every 13 billion years they get together and build the Large Hadron Collider... 
A physicist walks into a bar, takes out a neutron, and everyone is like:
- Hey, what do you have? Neutron?
To which the physicist responds:
- Calm down, it's not charged. 
Geneticists
Yes, this is bullshit, your genetically modified potato!
- Be quiet. If he hears more, he will be offended!.. 
Mathematicians 
People are divided into two types:
Type 1 - people who do not know what a fractal is.
Type 2 - people who know that people are divided into two types. 
Only an illiterate person would answer the question “How to find Lenin Square?” answers: “Multiply the length of Lenin by the width of Lenin.” But a literate person knows that you need to take the integral over the surface. 
Mathematics and physics were given two problems to solve:
Problem 1. Given a water tap, a stove, and an empty kettle. We need to boil water.
Physicist's solution: pour water into the kettle, turn on the stove, put the kettle on the stove, wait.
Mathematician solution: similar.
Problem 2. Given a water tap, a stove, and a full kettle. We need to boil water.
Physicist's solution: turn on the stove, put the kettle on the stove, wait.
The mathematician's solution: pour the water out of the kettle, and thereby reduce the problem to the previous one, already solved. 
An infinite number of mathematicians walk into a bar. The first one says: “I’ll have a glass of beer!” Second: “I’ll have half a glass of beer!” Third: “I’ll have a quarter of beer!” Fourth: “I’ll have 1/8 of a beer!” Bartender: “Wait a minute... I know your tricks - you have two glasses of beer for everyone!” 
Programmers
An optimist thinks the glass is half full. A pessimist thinks the glass is half empty. The programmer thinks that the glass is twice as large as needed. 
If Rammstein were involved in programming instead of music. 
There are only 10 types of people: those who understand the binary number system, and those who do not. 
Biologists 
Psychologists
How many Freudians does it take to screw in a light bulb?
- Two. One will screw in the light bulb, and the other will hold the penis... Oh, that is, the father... Oh, that is, the ladder. 
- How many psychologists does it take to change a light bulb?
- One is enough if the light bulb is ready to change. 
About everyone 
A physicist, a mathematician and an engineer are standing in a field. Each was given the same number of fence boards and told to fence in as many sheep as possible.
The engineer built a small but strong pen in the shape of a square.
A physicist built a pen in the shape of a circle, claiming that this shape could accommodate more sheep.
The mathematician built a fence in a circle, sat down in the center, declaring:
- We accept that I am outside. 
The billionaire decided to develop a method to find out who will win the races. He called a biologist, mathematician and physicist, gave him a task, a million dollars and a year of time. A year later the biologist comes:
- Well, knowing the exact pedigree of the horse, the success of its parents, what it was fed, how it was treated, I can accurately name the maximum speed.
Mathematician:
- Having accurate statistical data from the previous races of these horses, I can give the approximate results of this...
Physicist:
“I need another ten years, fifty million dollars, several assistants and a laboratory, but I have already built a model of the movement of an absolutely elastic spherical horse in a vacuum!” 
A physicist, mathematician and engineer were given the task of finding the volume of a red rubber ball.
The physicist immersed the ball in a glass of water and measured the volume of the displaced liquid.
The mathematician measured the diameter of the ball and calculated the triple integral.
The engineer took the “Table of Volumes of Red Rubber Balls” from the table and found the required value. 
Conduct a survival experiment. An engineer, a physicist and a mathematician are put in locked rooms. in front of each is a closed chest with food. An engineer's room opens in a couple of weeks. The chest is open, the engineer is fed, happy with life. Shows a nail - Here, I bent a master key from a nail and opened the lock. They go to the physicist. The chest was smashed to pieces, the physicist was full and satisfied. Shows a piece of paper with calculations: “He calculated where the chest’s weak point was, knocked it, and it crumbled.” They go to mathematics. The chest is closed, the floor, walls, everything is covered with formulas. An angry, emaciated mathematician sits on the floor: - So, let's try to go by the opposite. Suppose the chest is open... 
The question was asked simultaneously to a physicist and a mathematician: “In parallel. Antonym?
Physicist: “Consistently.”
Mathematician: “Perpendicular.” 
Everyone is used to thinking that scientists are boring people and have absolutely no sense of humor. In fact, this is not true at all. Rest assured, most of them are not boring at all and are extremely cheerful people. They love and know how to joke, and in an intricate and very witty way...
For some reason, as a rule, scientists are presented as such serious guys in white coats who communicate in their own language that no one else understands, while all the time being in their own “time-spatial continuum” (or, in simple terms, “on their own wavelength”). But in fact, scientists are the same people as the rest of us, and everything human is not alien to them, including a sense of humor.
Oh yes, some scientists are also humorous... For example, the great physicist Albert Einstein, who has many witty sayings and quotes:
One nice American journalist once interviewed him:
-What do you think is the difference between time and eternity?
- My dear, if I had time to explain this difference to you, it would take forever before you would understand it...
However, some of this professor’s jokes contain very deep wisdom.
Once at a lecture, Einstein was asked: “ How are great scientific discoveries made? He replied: " Let’s imagine that everyone knows about something that it is impossible to do. But there is some ignorant person here who has no idea about this. He makes a discovery!»…
Indeed, all discoveries and inventions are made not thanks to, but in spite of public opinion, and all scientific discoverers are revolutionaries of a kind who challenge established scientific dogmas.
And as befits all truly great scientists, Einstein was very absent-minded and forgetful. One day, in connection with this trait, a funny incident happened to him.
Despite his advanced age and worldwide fame, the scientist did not hesitate to use public transport. One day he boarded a Berlin tram and, out of habit, immediately plunged into reading. Then, noticing the conductor, he pulled out the money he had prepared in advance for a ticket from his pocket.
-There's not enough here- said the conductor.
- It can not be“,” Einstein answered without looking up from his book.
-I'm telling you it's not enough- the conductor repeated with irritation. Einstein felt in his pocket and indeed found another coin. He felt uncomfortable, but the conductor said with a smile:
-Nothing grandpa, just need to learn arithmetic!
But we are all talking about Einstein; there are other scientists worthy of our attention. For example, Robert Wood, who drove his car and ran a red light. The policeman stopped him and demanded a fine. Wood began to make excuses:
-I was driving too fast, and from a car traveling thousands of kilometers per second, the red traffic light looks green!
Unfortunately, the policeman did not understand the joke, and also fined the scientist for speeding...
Heisenberg was driving a car when he was stopped by the traffic police. " Don’t you know how fast you’re driving?”- the policeman asked him. " No", Heisenberg replied, " But I know exactly where I am at the moment».
There are a lot of jokes in the scientific world about the famous Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev and his equally famous table of chemical elements. After all, according to legend, this table first appeared to him in a dream. That’s why they say that before Mendeleev dreamed about her, Pushkin dreamed about her, but he didn’t understand anything about it (you can dream about something like that!), and Mendeleev had to dream about her.
But apparently the first place in scientific humor in our time is occupied by the so-called “British scientists”.
Who are these “British scientists”? These are scientists (and not necessarily from Britain) who are engaged in various absurd, ridiculous and divorced from reality scientific research. A special Ig Nobel Prize (a parody of the Nobel Prize) was even created for such scientists.
Here are some of the Ig Nobel Prize winners:
Indian scientist K. Sreekumar received the Ig Nobel Prize in mathematics for his report “ Calculating the total area of Indian elephants", American scientist David Schmidt won a prize in physics for finding out why, when the shower is turned on, the curtain is pulled inward (it turns out a mini hurricane with a low pressure zone is created in the bathtub), German scientist Arnd Lake for proving that beer foam obeys laws of exponential decay (this is what it means to drink beer with benefit).
And a group of scientists from the UK (real “British scientists”) received an Ig Nobel Prize in biology for their research: “ Mating courtship between ostriches and humans on British farms.”.
But in general, a strange research topic in biology, which also received an Ig Nobel Prize: biologist K. Molider from Holland became an Ig Nobel laureate for ... description “ the first scientifically recorded manifestation of homosexual necrophilia in wild ducks"(I wonder what this scientist smoked before choosing such a topic for research?).
And of course, a huge number of jokes and all kinds of tales have been created about scientists:
A biologist, an engineer, and a mathematician are sipping coffee on the patio when they notice two people walking into a house across the street. After some time, three people already left the house.
Biologist: Two mated, multiplied and three left the house.
Engineer: No, it's just that our initial observation was wrong!
Mathematician: You're both wrong. You need to wait until another person enters the house and then it will be empty again.
A physicist, mathematician and engineer were given the task of finding the volume of a red rubber ball.
The physicist immersed the ball in a glass of water and measured the volume of the displaced liquid.
The mathematician measured the diameter of the ball and calculated the triple integral.
The engineer took the “Table of Volumes of Red Rubber Balls” from the table and found the required value.
A woman comes to the tailor's studio:
- Please sew me a nightgown 3 meters long.
- Why do you need this?
- And my husband is a scientist. For him, the main thing is the search, not the end result.
The research scientist, looking up from the microscope, sadly asks his colleagues:
- Gentlemen, does anyone know the antonym for the word “eureka”?
In front of the astonished audience, the professor produced a proof from the theorem.
At the Institute of Applied Physics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, it was theoretically proven that a liter of vodka spilled on the floor occupies an area equal to one square meter and is actually a square liter. Conduct practical experiments with scientists until a hand is raised.
Who is this? -
Yes, some crazy person... claims that he invented clergy
- Like this?
The man pulls the gag out of his mouth and starts screaming:
- I am the inventor Popov! I am the inventor of Popov!!!
A plumber fixes a toilet at the professor's house. He worked for half an hour, adjusted everything and said:
- You have a hundred dollars.
The professor begins to be indignant:
- I’m a professor, a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences - and even then I don’t get a hundred dollars for half an hour!
The plumber answers:
- This is fine. When I was a professor, I didn’t get that much either.
The hardest thing about writing a dissertation is not putting emoticons after every good thought.
Who are you?
- I am a peaceful atom...
- Why with an axe?
- You see how little you know about the peaceful atom
The biggest proof of the existence of intelligent life in the Universe is the fact that so far no one has tried to contact us.
Night, darkness. A light bulb shines among the branches of a large tree. A very drunk man walks past a tree. He stops and looks carefully at the tree:
- Well, Michurin, well, old man, I didn’t expect it!
Neutron walks into a bar and asks, “How much is your drink?” The bartender replies: “That’s enough for you, you’re already charged.”
Tachyon walks into a bar. The bartender told him: “Tachyons are not served!” “It’s strange,” says the tachyon, “but they served us tomorrow.”
Helium walks into a bar and orders a beer. The bartender turns around and says, "Sorry, we don't serve noble gases." Helium does not react.
Professor of Mathematics:
- Yes, my friends, there are amazing coincidences in human life... If, for example, I multiply my date of birth by my phone number, and from the product I subtract the age of my mother-in-law, squared, then the remainder will be my house number.
A mathematician comes to a bakery, but forgot the word “five”. Says to the seller:
- Give me more than four loaves, but less than six!
The magazine "Chemistry and Life" began publishing culinary recipes.
Meet Vasya. He studies red blood cells.
- Yes, I study red blood cells, my father studied red blood cells, my grandfather studied red blood cells. You see, red blood cells are in our blood.
British scientists have invented a device with which you can easily pass through walls, calling the invention a “door”.
Einstein once wrote to Charlie Chaplin:
- Your film “Gold Rush” is understood all over the world, and you will certainly become a great person.
To which Chaplin replied:
- I admire you even more. Nobody in the world understands your theory of relativity, but you still became a great man!...
Scientists at Harvard University have proven that white mice reproduce better if they are not disturbed by scientists at Harvard University.
An infinite number of mathematicians walk into a bar. The first one says: “I’ll have a glass of beer!” Second: “I’ll have half a glass of beer!” Third: “I’ll have a quarter of beer!” Fourth: “I’ll have 1/8 of a beer!” Bartender: “Wait a minute... I know your tricks - you have two glasses of beer for everyone!”
The vice-president of the Animal Welfare League, Professor Petrov, wrote in his will: “I leave all my suits and sweaters to the unfortunate moth, persecuted by people...”
Few people remember the laboratory assistant of Pierre and Marie Curie. Yes, she didn’t glow much...
Rutherford liked to say that all sciences are divided into two groups - physics and stamp collecting.
Modern sellers not only do not know the multiplication table, but also do not know how to use a calculator,” says the professor, coming home from the market.
- How did you manage to make such a discovery? - asks the wife.
- I asked you to weigh 127.7 grams of sausage. By the way, they also don’t know how to throw calculators at moving targets...
In Paradise, Archimedes, Pascal and Newton play hide and seek. Archimedes drives and starts counting. Pascal runs away beyond the horizon, and Newton looks back, takes a stick, draws a square around himself with a side of 1 meter and stands inside the square. Archimedes finishes counting, opens his eyes and sees Newton:
- I see Newton!
- Eh, no! Newton per square meter is Pascal!
The idea of the theory of relativity came to A. Einstein during his student days, when he was either taking his friends away from a merry party, or he was being taken...
British scientists have found that mice go to the mousetrap not for free cheese, but for extreme sports.
A brilliant invention was made by domestic scientists. They created a cell phone with a TV, radio, DVD player, compass, electric razor, microwave, heater, vacuum cleaner, refrigerator and toilet. True, only the toilet works so far.
As D.I. Mendeleev liked to say, you can’t pour the periodic table of elements into a glass...
You can’t say anything, the periodic table was lucky with it. And how many great discoveries do people dream of who don’t understand anything about them?
Chemistry classes did not bring D.I. Mendeleev had enough income, so he made suitcases, but this did not bring him joy, and he decided to simultaneously start inventing vodka.
If Lomonosov had been born at the end of the twentieth century, he would not have had enough money even to travel to the University, much less for tutors, and even less so for bribes to the admissions committee. In general, his descendants would have only one funny last name left...
Scientists crossed a hedgehog and a woodpecker. The little hedgehog is still trying to climb the tree.
British scientists have found that the number of tired legs is twice as large as the number of bad heads.
The Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded to two Americans and an Englishman who offered to save money on Nobel Prize payments.
Astrology is an exact science, everything said in horoscopes will definitely come true. It’s just unknown when, where, with whom and what exactly.
A drunken physicist stands at the station and waits for the train. A gypsy woman approaches him: - Gild your pen, dear, I’ll tell you everything you want!
The physicist takes out fifty dollars: - Tell me the half-life of radium!
The gypsy woman has O_O eyes!
And the physicist said to her: “Well, you see, I didn’t earn any money!” and he puts the money back in his pocket.
The eternal tragedy of science: ugly facts kill beautiful hypotheses.
Scientists have found a new method of reproduction - cloning. Why didn't you like the old one?
Two professors are relaxing on a bench in the park. One says:
- And yet man is an amazingly strange creature.
- Why do you think so, colleague? - asks the interlocutor.
- It is enough to tell any of them that there are 9567432876932176978 stars in the sky, and he will believe. And it’s worth writing: “Caution! Painted!”, and he will definitely check it with his finger.
Two physicists are sitting in a summer cafe, already quite tipsy. A pretty girl walks by. One says to the other:
- Look how interesting the atoms are grouped!
“Day 19. I finally discovered the professor's reflex. He writes something down in his notebook every time I drool.”
Pavlov's dog.
A lecturer on a collective farm gives a speech:
- Currently, some pessimistic elements are catastrophically mystifying pathological abstraction. From the point of view of a banal concept, this phenomenon is possible. What do you think, fellow collective farmers?
The collective farmer stands up, shakes off the manure from his felt boots and answers:
- That’s how it is, because it can’t be like that if something didn’t exist. And not because it is there at all, but when it is there, then it’s here!
Despite the seriousness of their profession, mathematicians, physicists, mathematicians and other scientists, like all people, love to joke. Many people believe that smart people do not have a sense of humor, but in fact, not everyone can understand the jokes of scientists, because they are certainly related to their specialization. We present to your attention a selection of funny pictures and phrases that will make those who have dedicated their lives to science laugh.
A moment of humor for scientists: jokes from people who devoted their lives to science
Chemists
“Careful! Wet floor"
Physicists
How to measure the heroic silushka?
You need to multiply the mass by the acceleration!
Somehow the pressure goes from one bar to one bar...
"I'm irresistible!" - screamed a vertically polarized electromagnetic wave, falling at Brewster's angle onto a horizontal glass surface.
Physicists have a tradition: every 13 billion years they get together and build the Large Hadron Collider.
A physicist walks into a bar, takes out a neutron, and everyone is like:
- Hey, what do you have? Neutron?
To which the physicist responds:
- Calm down, it's not charged.
Geneticists
- Yes, this is bullshit, your genetically modified potato!
- Be quiet. If he hears more, he will be offended!..
Mathematicians
People are divided into two types:
Type 1 - people who do not know what a fractal is.
Type 2 - people who know that people are divided into two types.
Only an illiterate person would answer the question “How to find Lenin Square?” answers: “Multiply the length of Lenin by the width of Lenin.” But a literate person knows that you need to take the integral over the surface.
Mathematics and physics were given two problems to solve:
Problem 1. Given a water tap, a stove, and an empty kettle. We need to boil water.
Physicist's solution: pour water into the kettle, turn on the stove, put the kettle on the stove, wait.
Mathematician solution: similar.
Problem 2. Given a water tap, a stove, and a full kettle. We need to boil water.
Physicist's solution: turn on the stove, put the kettle on the stove, wait.
The mathematician's solution: pour the water out of the kettle, and thereby reduce the problem to the previous one, already solved.
An infinite number of mathematicians walk into a bar. The first one says: “I’ll have a glass of beer!” Second: “I’ll have half a glass of beer!” Third: “I’ll have a quarter of beer!” Fourth: “I’ll have 1/8 of a beer!” Bartender: “Wait a minute... I know your tricks - you have two glasses of beer for everyone!”
Programmers
An optimist thinks the glass is half full. A pessimist thinks the glass is half empty. The programmer thinks that the glass is twice as large as needed.
If Rammstein were involved in programming instead of music.
There are only 10 types of people: those who understand the binary number system, and those who do not.
Biologists
Psychologists
— How many Freudians does it take to screw in a light bulb?
- Two. One will screw in the light bulb, and the other will hold the penis... Oh, that is, the father... Oh, that is, the ladder.
— How many psychologists does it take to change a light bulb?
- One is enough if the light bulb is ready to change.
About everyone
A physicist, a mathematician and an engineer are standing in a field. Each was given the same number of fence boards and told to fence in as many sheep as possible.
The engineer built a small but strong pen in the shape of a square.
A physicist built a pen in the shape of a circle, claiming that this shape could accommodate more sheep.
The mathematician built a fence in a circle, sat down in the center, declaring:
— We accept that I am outside.
The billionaire decided to develop a method to find out who will win the races. He called a biologist, mathematician and physicist, gave him a task, a million dollars and a year of time. A year later the biologist comes:
- Well, knowing the exact pedigree of the horse, the success of its parents, what it was fed, how it was treated, I can accurately name the maximum speed.
Mathematician:
- Having accurate statistical data from the previous races of these horses, I can give the approximate results of this...
Physicist:
“I need another ten years, fifty million dollars, several assistants and a laboratory, but I have already built a model of the movement of an absolutely elastic spherical horse in a vacuum!”
A physicist, mathematician and engineer were given the task of finding the volume of a red rubber ball.
The physicist immersed the ball in a glass of water and measured the volume of the displaced liquid.
The mathematician measured the diameter of the ball and calculated the triple integral.
The engineer took the “Table of Volumes of Red Rubber Balls” from the table and found the required value.
Conduct a survival experiment. An engineer, a physicist and a mathematician are put in locked rooms. In front of each is a closed chest with food.
An engineer's room opens in a couple of weeks. The chest is open, the engineer is fed, happy with life. Shows a nail - Here, I bent a master key from a nail and opened the lock.
They go to the physicist. The chest was smashed to pieces, the physicist was full and satisfied. Shows a piece of paper with calculations: “He calculated where the weak point of the chest was, knocked it, and it crumbled.”
They go to mathematics. The chest is closed, the floor, walls, everything is covered with formulas. An angry, emaciated mathematician sits on the floor: “Okay, let’s try to do it by contradiction.” Let's say the chest is open...
The question was asked simultaneously to a physicist and a mathematician: “In parallel. Antonym?
Physicist: “Consistently.”
Mathematician: “Perpendicular.”
