Physics Jokes and Anecdotes
At the physics exam: 'Describe the universe in 200 words and give three examples.'
Question:
What do physicists enjoy doing the most at baseball games?
Answer:
The 'wave'.
The Stanford Linear Accelerator Center was known as SLAC, until the big earthquake, when it became known as SPLAC.
SPLAC? Stanford Piecewise Linear Accelerator.
A student recognizes Einstein in a train and asks: Excuse me, professor, but does New York stop by this train?
Researchers in Fairbanks Alaska announced last week that they have discovered a superconductor which will operate at room temperature.
The answer to the problem was 'log(1+x)'. A student copied the answer from the good student next to him, but didn't want to make it obvious that he was cheating, so he changed the answer slightly, to 'timber(1+x)'
One day in class, Richard Feynman was talking about angular momentum. He described rotation matrices and mentioned that they did not commute. He said that Sir William Hamilton discovered noncommutivity one night when he was taking a walk in his garden with Lady Hamilton. As they sat down on a bench, there was a moment of passion. It was then that he discovered that AB did not equal BA.
The experimentalist comes running excitedly into the theorist's office, waving a graph taken off his latest experiment. 'Hmmm,' says the theorist, 'That's exactly where you'd expect to see that peak. Here's the reason (long logical explanation follows).' In the middle of it, the experimentalist says 'Wait a minute', studies the chart for a second, and says, 'Oops, this is upside down.' He fixes it. 'Hmmm,' says the theorist, 'you'd expect to see a dip in exactly that position. Here's the reason...'.
A Princeton plasma physicist is at the beach when he discovers an ancient looking oil lantern sticking out of the sand. He rubs the sand off with a towel and a genie pops out. The genie offers to grant him one wish. The physicist retrieves a map of the world from his car an circles the Middle East and tells the genie, 'I wish you to bring peace in this region'.
After 10 long minutes of deliberation, the genie replies, 'Gee, there are lots of problems there with Lebanon, Iraq, Israel, and all those other places. This is awfully embarrassing. I've never had to do this before, but I'm just going to have to ask you for another wish. This one is just too much for me'.
Taken aback, the physicist thinks a bit and asks, 'I wish that the Princeton tokamak would achieve scientific fusion energy break-even.'
After another deliberation the genie asks, 'Could I see that map again?'
What is the difference between a physicist, an engineer, and a mathematician?
If an engineer walks into a room and sees a fire in the middle and a bucket of water in the corner, he takes the bucket of water and pours it on the fire and puts it out.
If a physicist walks into a room and sees a fire in the middle and a bucket of water in the corner, he takes the bucket of water and pours it eloquently around the fire and lets the fire put itself out.
If a mathematician walks into a room and sees a fire in the middle and a bucket of water in the corner, he convinces himself there is a solution and leaves. (credit: Jeremiah Jazdzewski)
An experimental physicist performs an experiment involving two cats, and an inclined tin roof.
The two cats are very nearly identical; same sex, age, weight, breed, eye and hair color.
The physicist places both cats on the roof at the same height and lets them both go at the same time. One of the cats fall off the roof first so obviously there is some difference between the two cats.
What is the difference?
One cat has a greater mew. (credit: Mike Varney)
French physicist Ampere (1775-1836) had two cats, one big and a one small, and he loved them very much. But when the door was closed cats couldn't enter or exit the room. So Ampere ordered two holes to be made in his door: one big for the big cat, and one small for the small cat. (credit: Marga - unverified story)
A psychologist makes an experiment with a mathematician and a physicist. He puts a good-looking, naked woman in a bed in one corner of the room and the mathematician on a chair in another one, and tells him: 'I´ll half the distance between you and the woman every five minutes, and you´re not allowed to stand up.' the mathematician runs away, yelling: 'in that case, I´ll never get to this woman!'. After that, the psychologist takes the physicist and tells him the plan. The physicist starts grinning. the psychologist asks him: 'but you´ll never get to this woman?', the physicists tells him: 'sure, but for all practical things this is a good approximation.' (credit: Thomas Mayer)
Why did the chicken cross the Mobius strip?
To get to the same side. (credit: Tom Gregg)
Why did the chicken cross the road?
Issac Newton: Chickens at rest tend to stay at rest, chickens in motion tend to cross roads. (credit: Muhammad Ahmed)
A neutron walks into a bar; he asks the bartender, 'How much for a beer?' The bartender looks at him, and says 'For you, no charge.'
Two fermions walk into a bar. One orders a drink. The other says 'I'll have what he's having.' (credit: Jeff Nastasi)
Two atoms bump into each other. One says 'I think I lost an electron!' The other asks, 'Are you sure?', to which the first replies, 'I'm positive.'
Renee Descartes walks into a bar, the bartender says 'sir can I get you a martini 'Descartes says 'I don't think...' and he disappears (credit: OCROWLEY101)
Where does bad light end up? Answer: In a prism! (credit: Gary Lisica)
Heisenberg is out for a drive when he's stopped by a traffic cop. The cop says 'Do you know how fast you were going?' Heisenberg says 'No, but I know where I am.'
W hy did the chicken cross the road? Albert Einstein: Whether the chicken crossed the road or the road crossed the chicken depends on your frame of reference.
There is this farmer who is having problems with his chickens. All of the sudden, they are all getting very sick and he doesn't know what is wrong with them. After trying all conventional means, he calls a biologist, a chemist, and a physicist to see if they can figure out what is wrong. So the biologist looks at the chickens, examines them a bit, and says he has no clue what could be wrong with them. Then the chemist takes some tests and makes some measurements, but he can't come to any conclusions either. So the physicist tries. He stands there and looks at the chickens for a long time without touching them or anything. Then all of the sudden he starts scribbling away in a notebook. Finally, after several gruesome calculations, he exclaims, 'I've got it! But it only works for spherical chickens in a vacuum.'
