UTC Physics Humor 1
Mechanics
- Lorries *C
- A fellow was following a truck in heavy traffic. Every block or
so, when they were stopped at a stop light, the driver of the truck
would jump out of the cab with a big stick and bang on the side of
the cargo bay. He'd then jump back into the cab in time to drive
away when the signal changed.
- The first fellow observed this for several miles, until he could
stand it no longer. The next time the truck driver jumped out with
the stick, the first fellow jumped out and ran up to him. "I'm sorry
to bother you," he said, over the din of the banging, "but I am very
curious; could you tell me what you are doing?"
- Without breaking rhythm, the truck driver replied, "Sure, Mac.
Ya see, this here's a six-ton truck but I've got eight tons of
canaries aboard, so I've gotta keep two ton of them flying all the
time so I don't break an axle".
- Newton's Laws of Spam
- Newton's 1st Law of Spam: A slab of spam at rest will remain
at rest unless it decides to get up and move...
- Newton's 2nd Law of Spam: A slab of spam in motion will
remain in motion because everyone moves out of the way when they
see it coming.
- Newton's 3rd Law of Spam: For every action involving a slab of
spam there is an equal and opposite reaction. ex. - Eat spam, Hurl
spam.
- Barometer joke
- My friend once saw a question like this on his physics final:
How would you use a baramoter to find the height of a building.
- 1. Find someone who knows how tall the building is, and trade
him the barometer for the information.< teacher rejects: not a
property characteristic of the barometer>
- 2. Measure the height of the barometer. Scale the side of the
building, measuring its height in barometer-units.< rejected: uses
no basic scientific principles>
- 3. Drop the barometer from the top of the building. Measure the
time until it hits the street. Correcting for the mass/surface ratio
of the instrument, use basic acceleration equation to find the
height.< rejected: barometer is no longer a barometer>
- 4. Tie string to top of barometer. Lower from roof to almost
ground. Swing. Period of pendulum can be used to find distance
from barometer's Center of Gravity to top of building. Add
displacement from CG to bottom of barometer; this is height.<
rejected: does not incorporate barometer's intended function>
- 5. Take the barometer outside on a sunny day, measure its
shadow and the buildings shadow.< rejected: cloudy today>
- 6. Sell the barometer. Purchase a tape measure long enough to
measure the height of the building.< rejected: this is not a business
course.>
- 7. Give the barometer as a prize to the one who comes up with
the most accurate measurement of the building's height.< rejected:
you have to return the barometer after you finish.>
- 8. Measure the barometric pressure at the top and bottom of
the building. Plug these into the equation in the book and spit out
the answer.< accepted: Finally, what the teacher wanted.>
- Oh! You want that *boring* stuff from the beginning of the
term! What is something this simple doing on the final? Anyone who
doesn't know that has already dropped. I assumed you wanted us to
*think*!
Gravity
- IT'S NOT JUST A GOOD IDEA; IT'S THE LAW!
- Original Author: GEO1 @ PSUADMIN; 03/24/94
- Correction
- Actually, there's no such thing as gravity--the world just
sucks! Brian Pearson; 04/01/94
- We can defeat gravity.
- The problem is the paperwork involved.
- Heavy Boots
- About 1983, I was in a philosophy class at the University of
Wisconsin, Madison (good science/engineering school) and the
teaching assistant was explaining Descartes. He was trying to
show how things don't always happen the way we think they will
and explained that, while a pen always falls when you drop it on
Earth, it would just float away if you let go of it on the Moon.
- My jaw dropped a little. I blurted "What?!" Looking around the
room, I saw that only my friend Mark and one other student looked
confused by the TA's statement. The other 17 people just looked at
me like "What's your problem?"
- "But a pen would fall if you dropped it on the Moon, just more
slowly." I protested.
- "No it wouldn't." the TA explained calmly, "because you're too
far away from the Earth's gravity."
- Think. Think. Aha! "You saw the APOLLO astronauts walking
around on the Moon, didn't you?" I countered, "why didn't they float
away?" "Because they were wearing heavy boots." he responded, as
if this made perfect sense (remember, this is a Philosophy TA
who's had plenty of logic classes).
- By then I realized that we were each living in totally different
worlds, and did not speak each others language, so I gave up. As we
left the room, my friend Mark was raging. "My God! How can all
those people be so stupid?"
- I tried to be understanding. "Mark, they knew this stuff at one
time, but it's not part of their basic view of the world, so they've
forgotten it. Most people could probably make the same mistake."
To prove my point, we went back to our dorm room and began
randomly selecting names from the campus phone book. We called
about 30 people and asked each this question: 1. If you're standing
on the Moon holding a pen, and you let go, will it a) float away, b)
float where it is, or c) fall to the ground?
- About 47 percent got this question correct. Of the ones who
got it wrong, we asked the obvious follow-up question: 2. You've
seen films of the APOLLO astronauts walking around on the Moon,
why didn't they fall off?
- About 20 percent of the people changed their answer to the
first question when they heard this one! But the most amazing part
was that about half of them confidently answered, "Because they
were wearing heavy boots."
- I say, science education must be at an all time peak !!!
- Buttered Toast and Cats
- Q. This question was posed to the Usenet Oracle: If you drop a
buttered piece of bread, it will fall on the floor butter-side down.
If a cat is dropped from a window or other high and towering place,
it will land on it's feet. But what if you attach a buttered piece of
bread, butter-side up to a cat's back and toss them both out the
window? Will the cat land on it's feet? Or will the butter splat on
the ground? -Mike
- A. And in response, thus spake the Oracle: Even if you are too
lazy to do the experiment yourself you should be able to deduce the
obvious result. The laws of butterology demand that the butter
must hit the ground, and the equally strict laws of feline
aerodynamics demand that the cat can not smash it's furry back. If
the combined construct were to land, nature would have no way to
resolve this paradox. Therefore it simply does not fall.
- That's right you clever mortal (well, as clever as a mortal can
get), you have discovered the secret of antigravity! A buttered cat
will, when released, quickly move to a height where the forces of
cat-twisting and butter repulsion are in equilibrium. This
equilibrium point can be modified by scraping off some of the
butter, providing lift, or removing some of the cat's limbs, allowing
descent.
- Most of the civilized species of the Universe already use this
principle to drive their ships while within a planetary system. The
loud humming heard by most sighters of UFOs is, in fact, the
purring of several hundred tabbies. The one obvious danger is, of
course, if the cats manage to eat the bread off their backs they
will instantly plummet. Of course the cats will land on their feet,
but this usually doesn't do them much good, since right after they
make their graceful landing several tons of red-hot starship and
pissed off aliens crash on top of them.
- And now a few words on solving the problem of creating a ship
using the aforementioned anti-gravity device. One could power a
ship by means of cats held in suspended animation (say, about -190
degrees Celsius) with buttered bread strapped to their backs, thus
avoiding the possibility of collisions due to tempermental felines.
More importantly, how do you steer, once the cats are all held in
stasis?
- I offer a modest proposal: We all know that wearing a white
shirt at an Italian restaurant is a guaranteed way to take a trip to
the laudromat. Plaster the outside of your ship with white shirts.
Place four nozzles symmetrically around the ship, which is, of
course, saucer shaped. Fire tomato sauce out in proportion to the
directions you want to go. The ship, drawn by the shirts, will
automatically follow the sauce.
- If you use t-shirts, you won't go as fast as you would by using,
say, expensive dress shirts. This does not work as well in deep
gravity wells, since the tomato sauce (now falling down a black
hole, perhaps) will drag the ship with it, despite the counter force
of the anti-gravity cat/butter machine. Your only hope at that
point is to jettison enormous quantities of Tide. This will create
the well-known Gravitational Tidal Force.
Temperature
- "Absolute zero is cool."
- Superconductor
- Researchers in Fairbanks Alaska announced last week that they
have discovered a superconductor which will operate at room
temperature.
- Cold Fusion: Looney Theory of the Week
- "Hey Mike?"
- "Yeah, Gabe?"
- "We got a problem down on Earth. In Utah."
- "I thought you fixed that last century!"
- "No, no, not that. Someone's found a loophole in the physics
program. They're getting energy out of nowhere."
- "Blessit! Lemme check..."< tappity clickity tappity> "Hey, I
thought I fixed that! All right, let me find my terminal."< tappity
clickity tap... save... compile> "There, that ought to patch it."
- Boy Scout Story (true)
- Three years ago, when we took the scout troop of which I'm an
assistant scoutmaster to summer camp, the first aid class got a
first hand look at frostbite, not an easy task on a 98 degree
Arkansas day. Two of the boys were playing with a can of deodorant
and discovered evaporative cooling. Being the aforementioned 98
degrees, one of them thought it would be cool (bad pun-I know) to
keep spraying it on. Before long the damage had been done.
- Other interpretation of dreams
- Last week I took a b*tch of a stats test (a required course for
all first year psyc grad students at my university), and afterwards
I was plaqued with some of the worst dreams I've had in my lengthy
college career. The worst one, however, was when not only did I
fail the test, but I received a negative 40. I distinctly remember
commenting in my dream "Only in North Dakota can you get 40
below zero on a test." (For those that don't know, it gets mighty
cold up here, and 40 below zero is the same on both the celcius and
Farenheit scales. And come January, that'll be the daily high temp!)
David
- Heaven is hotter than Hell
- It is perhaps worth pointing out that Heaven is actually hotter
than Hell. My full source for this is a book called "A Random Walk in
Physics", published by the UK Institute of Physics, but apparently
the original is in Applied Optics, II, A14 (1972).
- In summary, the argument uses Isaiah 30:26 "The light of the
Moon shall be as the light of the Sun and the light of the Sun shall
be sevenfold, as the light of seven days." After various complex
arguments (and using the Stefan-Boltzmann fourth-power law,
which is familiar to you all, I'm sure) this gives the equation:
- (H/E) ** 4 = 50, where H is the temperature of Heaven and E is
the temperature of Earth.
- This implies the temperature of Heaven is 525 deg. C. By
contrast, the temperature of Hell must be less than 445 deg. C, the
temperature of the lake of boiling sulphur (see Rev 21:8.) If it were
any hotter, the sulphur would be a gas, not a lake. Thus Heaven is
hotter than Hell.
- Hell is the same temperature
- There are no physicists in the hottest parts of hell, because
the existence of a "hottest part" implies a temperature difference,
and any marginally competent physicist would immediately use this
to run a heat engine and make some other part of hell comfortably
cool. This is obviously impossible. -- Richard Davisson
Sound
- Things That Don't Make Any Noise
- Paint
- Bricks
- The Moon
- A banana
- Electricity
- Small spiders
- Busted amplifiers
- One hand clapping
- People who are dead
- Disconnected speakers
- Explosions in a vacuum
- Clocks that have stopped
- Anything floating in space
- A dormouse wearing slippers
- Someone who's lost their voice
- Kylie Minogue (wishful thinking!)
- My misses (well, Phil Shipley's misses)
- Trees falling in a forest if there's nobody there to
hear them
- All the alarm bells going off on cix's computer on
Monday night (at least according to their integrity
checker!)
- Stealth fighter
- An acoustic-guided submunition call the BAT may be good
against tanks, but not against an F-117. A reader who works on the
stealth fighter in Saudi Arabia says bats (the natural ones)
occasionally work their way into F-117 hangers [sic]. One night a
hungry bat turned right into an F-117 rudder and fell stunned to the
floor. He flew away groggily, leaving behind a heightened
impression of the aircraft's stealth. "I don't know what the radar
return is for the vertical tails of the F-117 but I always thought it
had to be more than an insect's," the reader said. "I guess I was
wrong." There may be some "science" in this -- the ultrasound
wavelengths used by bats are roughly the same as X-band radar.
(From Aviation Week and Space Technology, Oct 17, 1991 excerpted
without permission)
Light
- Darksuckers
- DARK CONSPIRACY INVOLVING ELECTRICAL POWER COMPANIES
SURFACES: Updated 8/7/88 W0PN
- For years the electrical utility companies have led the public
to believe they were in business to supply electricity to the
consumer, a service for which they charge a substantial rate. The
recent accidental acquisition of secret records from a well known
power company has led to a massive research campaign which
positively explodes several myths and exposes the massive hoax
which has been perpetrated upon the public by the power companies.
The most common hoax promoted the false concept that light bulbs
emitted light; in actuality, these 'light' bulbs actually absorb DARK
which is then transported back to the power generation stations via
wires. A more descriptive name has now been coined; the new
scientific name is for the device is DARKSUCKER.
- This newsletter introduces a brief synopsis of the darksucker
theory, which proves the existence of dark and establishes the fact
that dark has great mass, and further, that dark is the fastest
known particle in the universe. Apparently, even the celebrated Dr.
Albert Einstein did not suspect the truth.. that just as COLD is the
absence of HEAT, LIGHT is actually the ABSENCE of DARK... light
does not really exist!
- The basis of the darksucker theory is that electric light bulbs
suck dark. Take for example, the darksuckers in the room where you
are. There is much less dark right next to them than there is
elsewhere, demonstrating their limited range. The larger the
darksucker, the greater its capacity to suck dark. Darksuckers in a
parking lot or on a football field have a much greater capacity than
the ones in used in the home, for example.
- It may come as a surprise to learn that darksuckers also
operate on a celestial scale; witness the Sun. Our Sun makes use of
dense dark, sucking it in from all the planets and intervening dark
space. Naturally, the Sun is better able to suck dark from the
planets which are situated closer to it, thus explaining why those
planets appear brighter than do those which are far distant from
the Sun. Occasionally, the Sun actually oversucks; under those
conditions, dark spots appear on the surface of the Sun. Scientists
have long studied these 'sunspots' and are only recently beginning
to realize that the dark spots represent leaks of high pressure dark
because the Sun has oversucked dark to such an extent that some of
actually leaks back into space. This leakage of high pressure dark
frequently causes problems with radio communications here on
Earth due to collisions between the dark particles as they stream
out into space via the black 'holes' in the surface of the Sun.
- As with all manmade devices, darksuckers have a finite
lifetime. Once they are full of dark, they can no longer suck. This
condition can be observed by looking for the black spot on a full
darksucker when it has reached maximum capacity... you have surely
noticed that dark completely surrounds a full darksucker because it
no longer has the capacity to suck dark at all.
- A candle is a primitive darksucker. A new candle has a white
wick. You will notice that after the first use the wick turns black,
representing all the dark which has been sucked into it. If you hold
a pencil next to the wick of an operating candle, the tip will turn
black because it got in the way of the dark flowing into the candle.
Unfortunately, these primitive darksuckers have a very limited
range and are hazardous to operate because of the intense heat
produced.
- There are also portable darksuckers called flashlights. The
bulbs in these devices cannot handle all of the dark by themselves,
and must be aided by a dark storage unit called a battery. When the
dark storage unit is full, it must be either emptied (a process
called 'recharging') or replaced before the portable darksucker can
continue to operate. If you break open a battery, you will find
dense black dark inside, evidence that it is actually a compact dark
storage unit.
- The darksuckers on your automobile are high capacity units
with great range, thus they require much larger dark storage units
mounted under the hood of the vehicle. Since there is far more dark
available in the winter season, automobile dark storage units reach
capacity more frequently than they do in the summer, requiring
'recharging', or in severe cases, total replacement.
- Dark has great mass. When dark is drawn into a darksucker,
friction caused by the speed of the dark particles (called
anti-photons) actually generates substantial heat, thus it is unwise
to touch an operating dark sucker. Candles represent a special
problem, as the dark must travel into a solid wick instead of
through clear glass. This generates a great amount of heat, making
it very dangerous to touch an operating candle.
- Because dark has such great mass, it is very heavy. If you
swim just below the surface of a lake, you see a lot of 'light'
(absence of dark, to be more precise). As you go deeper and deeper
beneath the surface, you notice it gets darker and darker. When you
reach a depth of approximately fifty feet, you are in total darkness.
This is because the heavier dark sinks to the bottom of the lake,
making it appear 'lighter' near the surface.
- The power companies have learned to use the dark that has
settled to the bottom of lakes by pushing it through turbines, which
generate electricity to help push the dark into the ocean where it
may be safely stored for their devious purposes.
- Prior to the development of turbines, it was much more
difficult to get the dark from the rivers and lakes to the ocean. The
Indians recognized this problem, and developed means to assist the
flow of dark on it's long journey to the ocean. When on a river in a
canoe travelling in the same direction as the flow of dark, they
paddled slowly, so as not to impede the flow of dark; but when they
travelled against the flow of dark, they paddled vigorously to help
propel the dark along its way.
- Scientists are working feverishly to develop exotic new
instrumentation with which to measure the actual speed and energy
level of dark. While such instrumentation is beyond the
capabilities of the average layman, you can actually perform a
simple test to demonstrate the unbelievable speed of dark, right in
your own home.
- All that is required for the simple test is a closed desk drawer
situated in a bright room. You know from past experience that the
tightly shut drawer is FULL of dark. Now, place your hand firmly on
the drawer's handle. Quickly yank the drawer open.. the dark
immediately disappears, demonstrating the blinding speed with
which the dark travels to the nearest darksucker!
- The secrets of dark are at present known only to the power
companies. Dark must be very valuable, since they go to such
lengths to collect it in vast quantities. By some well hidden
method, more modern power 'generation' facilities have devised
methods to hide their collection of dark. The older facilities,
however, usually have gargantuan piles of solidified dark in huge
fenced in areas. Visitors to these facilities are told the huge black
piles of material are supplies of coal, but such is not the case.
- The power companies have long used code words to hide their
activities; D.C. is Dark Conspiracy, whole A.C. is Alternate
Conspiracy. The intent of the A.C. is not yet known, but the D.C. is
rapidly yielding it's secrets to the probing eyes and instruments of
honest scientists around the world. New developments are being
announced every day and we promise to keep the public informed of
these announcements as they occur via this newsletter. Les Dark,
Editor
- Lasers
- Today, thanks to men like Edison and Franklin, and frogs like
Galvini's, we receive almost unlimited benefits from electricity.
For example, in the past decade scientists developed the laser, an
electronic appliance that emits a beam of light so powerful that it
can vaporize a bulldozer two thousand yards away, yet so precise
that doctors can use it to perform delicate operations on the human
eyeball, provided they remember to change the power setting from
"VAPORIZE BULLDOZER" to "DELICATE." ... also from the book Bad
Habits by Dave Barry (it's superb).
- Why the Sky is Blue by John Ciardi
- I don't suppose you happen to know
- Why the sky is blue? It's because the snow
- Takes out the white. That leaves it clean
- For the trees and grass to take out the green.
- Then pears and bananas start to mellow,
- And bit by bit they take out the yellow.
- The sunsets, of course, take out the red
- And pour it into the ocean bed
- Or behind the mountains in the west.
- You take all that out and the rest
- Couldn't be anything else but blue.
- Look for yourself. You can see it's true.
- Sun light
- That reminds me of an exchange which I observed back then, at
the University of Arizona. A couple were walking across campus
just ahead of me. As we passed the newly sodded area around a
recently completed building, the coed commented about how fast
the grass was growing.
- "Yes," nodded her date knowingly, "that's because of the extra
hour of daylight it gets."
- "Oooh," she said, as her eyes widened and she gave this paragon
of wisdom an admiring glance. Bob Terry RATerry@SAUmag.edu
- Optician
- Q: What do you call an eye doctor who works in the islands off
Alaska?
- A: An Optical Aleutian.--Seymore Butts
Time
- My Extra Second
- Well, folks, we get an extra second today at 7 P.M.. CST (USA)
on July 1, 1994. What are YOU going to do with all this extra time
on your hands? Personally, I've decided to save mine. I figure if I
live at least 60 years, that gives me one extra minute. I'm asking
God to give me that one saved-up minute on my death bed when they
all think I've finally croaked to raise back up and get that one last
word in edgewise! BO10@UTMARTN.BITNET or asanders@utm.edu
- Snail Humor
- When a snail crossed the road, he was run over by a turtle.
Regaining consciousness in the emergency room, he was asked what
caused the accident. "I really can't remember," the snail replied.
"You see, it all happened so fast."
- Time Travel
- Those three boys are in the schoolyard bragging of how great
their fathers are.
- The first one says: "Well, my father runs the fastest. He can
fire an arrow, and start to run, I tell you, he gets there before the
arrow".
- The second one says: "Ha! You think that's fast! My father is a
hunter. He can shoot his gun and be there before the bullet".
- The third one listens to the other two and shakes his head. He
then says: "You two know nothing about fast. My father is a civil
servant. He stops working at 4:30 and he is home by 3:45"!!
- Time travel seminar
- To whom it may concern,
- There will be a seminar given on the subject of time travel in
the 21st century.
- It will be held on Thursday, January 1, 1920 at 12:00:01AM.
- Please to have marked your calendars.
updated 28 May 95