Nerdy science jokes (?)

April 6, 2016 • 3:00 pm

Stressed out about Special Snowflakes? Unwind with some humor from BuzzFeed: nerdy science jokes.  There are 22, but I’ll give just four. The article notes that only the “nerdiest science nerds” will understand them, but I take strong issue with that. And it’s by Tom Chivers, once a respectable journalist who appears to have now been corrupted by the BuzzFeed clickbait ethos.

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ThinkStock / BuzzFeed Via @drrichjlaw.
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Unsplash / Will Langenberg / BuzzFeed / Via unsplash.com Via @schroedinger99.

This one’s for Brits:

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ThinkStock / BuzzFeed Via @jackdeeth.
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Mikael Kristenson / Unsplash / BuzzFeed / Via unsplash.com

The really nerdy bit is the explanation that follows the cartoon just above:

Via @kerihw, who wishes to point out that, technically, 2D shapes don’t have faces, they have sides, so his joke doesn’t work.

h/t: Matthew Cobb

102 thoughts on “Nerdy science jokes (?)”

        1. That’s a good point. Does the joke only work in British English?

          (I’m always in a quandary what to call my wireless router. I usually pronounce it ‘rowter’ in the American way, because ‘rooter’ suggests something disreputable in English…)

          cr

          1. I would say, no. As an ‘Murican, I was rasied to say, route as “root” (or rute) and root the same way.

            Many Americans do say the former as “rowt”.

            My pronunciation may be due my mother who is from the US South. I also usually pronounce again as, “agayn” rather than the more common (in the US) “agin”.

          2. Yes, some Murcans do say rowt, but I don’t think any get their kicks on Rowt 66.
            A lot of Canucks up here say a-gain. I say agen.

          3. Around my part of Murica we actually say it both ways but in slightly different contexts.

            So… “root” 66. But “Rural rowt 99”. (a way of specifying a rural address)

          12. it works perfectly well in American English. Square root and Route 66 are pronounced rooot. A router is pronounced rowter, but ain’t no rowters in this here joke ( that I can detect).

          13. Interesting, since the origin of ‘router’ is definitely the verb ‘route’ (as in, routing messages from one line to another).

            cr

  3. Two cats are sitting on a sloped, smooth roof. How can you tell which cat will slide off first?

    .
    .
    .
    .

    The one with the lowest mew.

  4. A hipster chemist burned his hand on a beaker while in the lab.

    .
    .
    .
    .

    He tried to pick it up before it was cool.

  6. Three logicians walk into a bar. The bartender says “will all three of you be having beers?”
    The first one says “I dont know”
    The second one says “I dont know”
    The third one says “yes”

      1. We wouldn’t understand it anyway.

        Where the hell can you get a beer for 80p these days?!

          1. “Where the hell can you get a beer for 80p these days?!”

            In a supermarket?

        1. There’s an error in the joke. It should read, “The second scientist says, ‘I’ll have a glass of H2O too….”.

          No, wait! I get it now!

        2. The second scientist is supposed to reply … “I’ll have a glass of H20, too” = H2O2

          Hydrogen peroxide, poisonous; but also a good tooth cleaner in dilute solution as Pliny noted.)

      2. I’m still trying to figure out how to incorporate H2O3 into this joke. That would go with a FOOF.

          2. I was referring to SUB, of course, not ANT[im]ONY’s version…

            cr

  11. Love the root(66) one and the long face one, but I do not get the ATP one and yes, I know ATP’s adenosine triphosphate…

    2. “80p” — should be said as “eighty pence” but more commonly “eighty pee” (since decimalisation when we started using “p” for penny/pence).

      /@

  12. Speaking of … … (phonetic) evidence,
    noooo joke:

    the George Mason University Hoo – Hahs in charge of allegedly honoring that Very Late A. Scalia ?

    Last week ?

    Those Big Kiddos … … “walked back” (just looooathe that phrase all – the – time – now – used for Trumpisms) the acronym which they had last week applied, cuz o’the $20,000,000 from Chuckie Koch and yet another cool $20,000,000 from A. Nony Mous it’d receive — if the University REnamed its law school: A S S o L.

    Blue

  13. Once, I was on the university shuttle at UC Berkeley, when a mathematician sitting in front of me on the shuttle was greeted by another mathematician, who’d just boarded. One said to the other, “What’s happening?” (this was in the ’70s and everyone was trying to be hip). The other shrugged and replied with great ennui in his voice, “Nothing interesting ever happens on a straight line.” I thought that was pretty funny.

  14. People keep telling me that alcohol is not the solution. I know. Alcohol is a compound. Beer, on the other hand, is a solution.

          2. British “standard” joke on the theme of beer … “you don’t buy it, you just rent it.”
            It’s obligatory when shuffling sideways to make room at the trough.

  16. IF A=Funny THEN Laughter = Ha X 3

    Math joke: Jesus died for your sines. Why? Cos.

  17. I was afraid the barman in #4 was going to say “hypotenuse,” and I wouldn’t get the joke.

  18. This is a well-known joke: The Jewish boy in Catholic school learning math.
    “There was once a little Jewish boy who for the life of him was terrible at math. His parents had tried everything and nothing seemed to be working, so as their last resort they decided to send him to the local Catholic school because it had the best math program in the area. The first day, and every day after, the little boy came home and went straight upstairs and did all his homework. When they finally received his report card he had straight A’s. They were baffled an very curious about what the school did that worked so well, so they asked him “Son, what did this school do differently that helped you learn so well” the son replied “Well, “On that first day, when I walked in the front door and saw that guy nailed to the plus sign, I KNEW they meant business!” “

  19. OK, this is for philosophy nerds!!!

    Descartes is in a bar. The bartender asks him, “Will you have another drink?”
    Descartes says “I think not”. Then he disappears!!

    And for scientists who aren’t too sure about philosophy:

    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.”

    (Latter lifted verbatim from http://consc.net/misc/mpp-joke.html )

    1. How do you know if you’re in the philosophy department?

      It’s the one without wastebaskets.

  24. In Pavlov’s lab, one dog said to the other…”Watch this…when he rings that bell, if I salivate a little, he’ll write something down in that book.”

    3. This one got a chuckle because, I suspect, any dog owner knows who really runs the show.

  25. Apropo to the last joke on that page.

    Apparently a true story.

    A friend of mine is in a final exam for one of his Mechanial Engineering courses at university.

    A student puts his hand up while working the exam: “Excuse me professor XX, can we assume zero friction in the bearings?”

    The Professor replied, “No, all of the frictionless bearings are kept down the hall in the Physics Department.”

    * * *

    And this IS for sure a true story. I was sitting in one of my structural analysis courses and a student put his hand up and asked a question, which I can’t remember exactly; but I do remember that it indicated that the student was completely lost. Really lost: He didn’t get the most basic points under discussion.

    The professor replied, “I guess there’s just no substitute for intelligence …” (And that was it!)

    I’m sure he’d be fired these days for not providing a safe enough space in class.

    1. ‘only a chemist will get’ ?

      They were so elementary I got them all instantly*, but boy were they cringeworthy.

      (*And I’m not a chemist)

      cr

    2. I am a chemist (or at least I was); and cringeworthy is hardly the word for them!

      A variant on one of them: To the optimist, the glass is half full; to the pessimist, the glass is half empty; to the engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

      1. As an engineer:

        To the optimist, the glass is half full; to the pessimist, the glass is half empty; to the engineer, the glass is 100% over-designed.

        2. Aren’t engineers supposed to use a safety margin? 😉

          (Pick the one I hear is used in floors for buildings, and one will need a very big glass indeed. :))

          1. Yes. They are typically required to by law, depending on the industry.

            I almost wrote that it had a 100% margin of safety; but …

            Typically, civil engineering structures use a SF = 5. (Buildings don’t have to fly.)

            Floors are usually designed by deflection, not strength. The perception of flex to users becomes more important. And, deflections mean cracks, and people don’t like cracked walls and ceilings – even if they are structurally safe (strong enough).

          2. Yep, safety factor, load factor, various terms.

            As I recall, decades ago the design working load in New Zealand for residential houses was 30 pounds a square foot. If you consider an average house and occupants, that’s extremely unlikely to be reached.

            But now consider a shaky old wooden house in Grafton Gully, waiting to be demolished for the motorway, which in the interim is a student flat. And consider a student party where people are crammed in so tightly one has to squeeze past people to get to the door. The design load must have been exceeded many times over. Testimony to the massive de facto safety factors inherent in old wooden house construction.

            cr

  27. (Q)What do you get if yo ucross an octopus with a cow?
    (A) A reprimand from the Scientific Integrity and Progrssional Ethics Committee

    (A2) And a Nobel nomination from the Developmental Biology and Genetics Departments.

      1. Well, there’s your reason to do it. Where’s my test tube, CRISPr and cas9?

  28. There are 10 types of people in the world: those who understand binary, those who don’t, and those who didn’t realize this is a Base-3 joke.

  29. OMG,#6 made me LOL! “The one with the lowest mu!” I tutor physics (among other things), and mu is the coefficient of friction. More friction, less slide. Meow!

  30. Since we’re into nerdery, slightly OT, but I suppose you could call it a bad joke, is the TSA’s latest extravaganza:
    (as celebrated on Lowering the Bar):
    http://loweringthebar.net/2016/04/the-tsas-million-dollar-app-and-my-zero-dollar-equivalent.html

    I mention it because I’m sure, as Kevin Underhill states, that many of the nerds on this site will have knocked up a quick randomizing routine at some time or other.
    (Mine was just to display a selection of allegedly humorous taglines in random order. The randomising itself was trivially easy, what took longer was ensuring that every tagline got displayed once before any were repeated. Still only took me an evening, which was all such trivia was worth).

    cr

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