Shashi: Humor

H u m o r

Non-physicists may not find these jokes amusing!

Physics Related

I had a self-esteemed lab-assistant who was once explaining the working of a 3-pin ac socket as:
the positive (!) terminal emits protons, the negative terminal emits electrons, and the neutral emits neutrons.

One of my friends had the habit of making unnecessary remarks in class.
Once, in a general relativity class the professor wrote the value of Hubble's constant.
My friend asked immediately, "Is this value exact or approximate?"
The annoyed professor in response asked him, " What is the value of electronic charge?"
My friend said, "1.66*10e-19 coulomb."
Then the professor asked him the same question, "Is this value exact or approximate?"
My friend said, "Approximately Exact"
The professor then replied, "My value is then Exactly Approximate."

It was our Quantum Electrodynamics class.
The teacher was using colored chalks and it was hard to read those purple equations.
One of my classmates protested : "Please use white chalks and save these colored ones for Quantum Chromodynamics."

My professors said:

"Let me turn on this dullness machine."
--While turning on the transparency projector.
"My heart pains."
--While returning the graded test of a student who had done poorly on the test.
"I don't know how, but somehow it came into my notes. But I will look into it."
-- A quantum mechanics professor responding to some rather very elementary mistake pointed by someone (guess who!!) in class, and refusing to rectify that mistake.
"There is no time evolution of minus sign."
-- A professor replying a student's (of course, not me) question whether he took care of a minus sign before integrating or after with respect to time.
"There is no physics behind an integration."
-- Responding to the cliché "what is the physics behind this expression?"
"I do research in theoretical electronics."
"This is Institute of Indian Technology."
-- Commenting on a disturbing sound coming from a nearby engineering lab. (Our school's actual name was "Indian Institute of Technology.")

Forwarded by My Friends

How many physicists does it take to change a light bulb?
Only one, but 1000 applied for the job!

So You Wanna be a Professor?

One professor of mathematics noticed that his kitchen sink at his home had broke down. He called a plumber. The plumber came on the next day, sealed a few screws and everything was working as before. The professor was delighted. However, when the plumber gave him the bill a minute later, he was shocked.

"This is one third of my monthly salary!" he yelled.

Well, he paid and then the plumber said to him:

"I understand your position as a professor Why don't you come to our company and apply for a plumber position? You will earn three times as much as a professor. But remember, when you apply, tell them that you completed only seven elementary classes. They don't like educated people."

So it happened. The professor got a plumber job and his life significantly improved. He just had to seal a screw or two occasionally, and his salary went up significantly. One day, the board of the plumbing company decided that every plumber has to go to evening classes to complete the eighth grade. So, our professor had to go there too. It just happened that the first class was math.

The evening teacher, to check students' knowledge, asked for a formula for the area of the circle. The person asked was the professor. He jumped to the board, and then he realized that he forgot the formula. He started to reason it, he filled the white board with integrals, differentials and other advanced formulas to conclude the result he forgot. As a result he got "minus pi times r square". He didn't like the minus, so he started all over again. He got the minus again. No matter how many times he tried, he always got a minus. He was frustrated. He looked a bit scared at the class and saw all the plumbers whisper:

"Switch the limits of the integral!"

Proof Techniques

written by Armen H. Zemanian, published in The Physics Teacher, May 1994.

The usual techniques for proving things are often inadequate because they are merely concerned with truth. For more practical objectives, there are other powerful - but generally unacknowledged - methods. Here is an (undoubtedly incomplete) list of them:

PROOF OF BLATANT ASSERTION:

Use words and phrases like "clearly...,""obviously...,""it is easily shown that...," and "as any fool can plainly see..."

PROOF BY SEDUCTION:

"If you will just agree to believe this, you might get a better final grade."

PROOF BY INTIMIDATION:

"You better believe this if you want to pass the course."

PROOF BY INTERRUPTION:

Keep interrupting until your opponent gives up.

PROOF BY MISCONCEPTION:

An example of this is the Freshman's Conception of the Limit Process: "2 equals 3 for large values of 2." Once introduced, any conclusion is reachable.

PROOF BY OBFUSCATION:

A long list of lemmas is helpful in this case - the more, the better.

PROOF BY CONFUSION:

This is a more refined form of proof by obfuscation. The long list of lemmas should be arranged into circular patterns of reasoning - and perhaps more baroque structures such as figure-eights and fleurs-de-lis.

PROOF BY EXHAUSTION:

This is a modification of an inductive proof. Instead of going to the general case after proving the first one, prove the second case, then the third, then the fourth, and so on - until a sufficiently large n is achieved whereby the nth case is being propounded to a soundly sleeping audience.

References: I don't have any.

THE RABBIT'S THESIS

One sunny day a rabbit came out of her hole in the ground to enjoy the fine weather. The day was so nice that she became careless and a fox snuck up behind her and caught her.

"I am going to eat you for lunch!", said the fox.

"Wait!", replied the rabbit, "You should at least wait a few days."

"Oh yeah? Why should I wait?"

"Well, I am just finishing my thesis on 'The Superiority of Rabbits over Foxes and Wolves.'"

"Are you crazy? I should eat you right now! Everybody knows that a fox will always win over a rabbit."

"Not really, not according to my research. If you like, you can come into my hole and read it for yourself. If you are not convinced, you can go ahead and have me for lunch."

"You really are crazy!" But since the fox was curious and had nothing to lose, it went with the rabbit. The fox never came out.

A few days later the rabbit was again taking a break from writing and sure enough, a wolf came out of the bushes and was ready to set upon her.

"Wait!" yelled the rabbit, "you can't eat me right now."

"And why might that be, my furry appetizer?"

"I am almost finished writing my thesis on 'The Superiority of Rabbits over Foxes and Wolves.'"

The wolf laughed so hard that it almost lost its grip on the rabbit.

"Maybe I shouldn't eat you; you really are sick ... in the head. You might have

something contagious." "Come and read it for yourself; you can eat me afterward if you disagree with my conclusions." So the wolf went down into the rabbit's hole ... and never came out.

The rabbit finished her thesis and was out celebrating in the local lettuce

patch. Another rabbit came along and asked, "What's up? You seem very happy."

"Yup, I just finished my thesis."

"Congratulations. What's it about?"

"'The Superiority of Rabbits over Foxes and Wolves.'"

"Are you sure? That doesn't sound right."

"Oh yes. Come and read it for yourself." So together they went down into the rabbit's hole.

As they entered, the friend saw the typical graduate abode, albeit a rather messy one after writing a thesis. The computer with the controversial work was in one corner. And to the right there was a pile of fox bones, on the left a pile of wolf bones. And in the middle was a large, well-fed lion.

The moral of the story:

The title of your thesis doesn't matter.

The subject doesn't matter.

The research doesn't matter.

All that matters is who your advisor is.