September 14, 2004

Relative Humor

Posted by apostropher

In this light piece at Scientific American purporting to be a transcript of a comedy routine from Einstein's parrot, there is quite a volley of groan-inducing physics jokes. Just the sort of thing I love. It's pretty short, but the winners:

Hey, Parrot, what's the difference between a wild boar and Niels Bohr? When I say that God doesn't play dice, a wild boar doesn't tell me to stop telling God what to do. I hate that.
Let's see, two guys walk into an h-bar. An H-BAR. If you knew any physics you'd be on the floor, I swear.
So Schrödinger and Heisenberg are driving down the road, and Heisenberg says, 'Hey, I think you just ran over a cat.' And Schrödinger, he says, 'Is it dead?' And Heisenberg says, heh heh, get this: 'I can't be certain.'

Ha.

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Comments
1

I like the one about "Dirac on Rita Hayworth." Though, you could have made it even more physics-relevant if it had been Hedy Lamarr instead.

Posted by: Austin Train at September 14, 2004 01:50 PM
2

A math teacher gave a test with 99 questions, and noticed while grading it that the student's grades had repeating decimals. For example, a student who got 80/99 correct scored 80.8080%, a 90/99 scored 90.9090%.

So it was when little Tripp received his graded paper. Even though he had answered all 99 questions correctly, his score was 99.9999%!

"Well," said Tripp "That is the limit!"

Posted by: Tripp at September 14, 2004 04:43 PM
3

Since I can't be any funnier than that, I'll cut and paste Cecil Adams' (of the Straight Dope fame) classic explaination in verse:

Schroedinger, Erwin! Professor of physics!
Wrote daring equations! Confounded his critics!
(Not bad, eh? Don't worry. This part of the verse
Starts off pretty good, but it gets a lot worse.)
Win saw that the theory that Newton'd invented
By Einstein's discov'ries had been badly dented.
What now? wailed his colleagues. Said Erwin, "Don't panic,
No grease monkey I, but a quantum mechanic.
Consider electrons. Now, these teeny articles
Are sometimes like waves, and then sometimes like particles.
If that's not confusing, the nuclear dance
Of electrons and suchlike is governed by chance!
No sweat, though--my theory permits us to judge
Where some of 'em is and the rest of 'em was."
Not everyone bought this. It threatened to wreck
The comforting linkage of cause and effect.
E'en Einstein had doubts, and so Schroedinger tried
To tell him what quantum mechanics implied.
Said Win to Al, "Brother, suppose we've a cat,
And inside a tube we have put that cat at--
Along with a solitaire deck and some Fritos,
A bottle of Night Train, a couple mosquitoes
(Or something else rhyming) and, oh, if you got 'em,
One vial prussic acid, one decaying ottom
Or atom--whatever--but when it emits,
A trigger device blasts the vial into bits
Which snuffs our poor kitty. The odds of this crime
Are 50 to 50 per hour each time.
The cylinder's sealed. The hour's passed away. Is
Our pussy still purring--or pushing up daisies?
Now, you'd say the cat either lives or it don't
But quantum mechanics is stubborn and won't.
Statistically speaking, the cat (goes the joke),
Is half a cat breathing and half a cat croaked.
To some this may seem a ridiculous split,
But quantum mechanics must answer, "Tough @#&!
We may not know much, but one thing's fo' sho':
There's things in the cosmos that we cannot know.
Shine light on electrons--you'll cause them to swerve.
The act of observing disturbs the observed--
Which ruins your test. But then if there's no testing
To see if a particle's moving or resting
Why try to conjecture? Pure useless endeavor!
We know probability--certainty, never.'
The effect of this notion? I very much fear
'Twill make doubtful all things that were formerly clear.
Till soon the cat doctors will say in reports,
"We've just flipped a coin and we've learned he's a corpse."'
So saith Herr Erwin. Quoth Albert, "You're nuts.
God doesn't play dice with the universe, putz.
I'll prove it!" he said, and the Lord knows he tried--
In vain--until fin'ly he more or less died.
Win spoke at the funeral: "Listen, dear friends,
Sweet Al was my buddy. I must make amends.
Though he doubted my theory, I'll say of this saint:
Ten-to-one he's in heaven--but five bucks says he ain't."

What's the punch line, you say? I was too lazy to go upstairs, get down my Straight Dope books, find which one has the poem in question, and then type it in above. So I Google for it

...and I found it.

...at (wait for it)


freerepublic.com

Which only leads me to conculde, the universe is not only stranger than we imagine, it's stranger than we can imagine.

Posted by: admadm at September 14, 2004 09:25 PM
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