Scientists' favourite jokes

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A cop pulls over Werner Heisenberg’s car, comes to the window, and asks, “Do you have any idea how fast you were going?”

“No,” says Heisenberg, “but I know exactly where I am.”

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“I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something.”
― Richard P. Feynman

found: http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/1429989.Richard_P_Feynman

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Why did the chicken cross the road? Or is the road crossing the chicken? Or are the chicken and road even real beyond our ability to perceive them? ba dum pssshhhh

I’m not a scientist, but came up with the following:

They who can give up consistency to obtain a little completeness, deserve neither consistency nor completeness.

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For Scientists jokes I find myself telling this one a lot.

A psychologist, a physicist and a mathematician are all given a challenge to get the maximum area out of a length of chain link fencing. After working for a bit, the physicists feels pretty confident that he has won this challenge. His circle fence beats the psychologist’s square fence in area and the mathematician is so out of touch with the real world he has found himself wrapped up inside the chain link fencing. The physicist is about ready to declare himself the winner until the mathematician shouts “I define my area to be outside myself!”

I recently heard this lawyer/biologist joke crossover.

The NIH is currently debating whether or not to replace lab rats with lawyers. Lawyers seem to make a pretty good fit as a lab animal. Lawyers multiply at the same rate as rats, researchers are far less likely to get attached to a lawyer than a rat, and it turns out no matter how hard you try there are just somethings you can’t get a rat to do.

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came here to post just this, was not disappointed to see it as top post. I’ve used this joke as an icebreaker when interviewing people for years.

Express the following equation as a limerick:

( 12 + 144 + 20 + ( 3 × √4) ) / 7 + 5 × 11 = 9² + 0

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A computer science joke:
In California there is a Volkswagen Beetle with the personalized license plate: “FEATURE”

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That’s very similar to my co-worker’s favorite CS joke: The two most difficult problems in computer programming are naming things and cache invalidation and off-by-one errors.

My favorite (language science?) joke is: I’m a linguist, so I appreciate ambiguity more than most people.

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Science-ish:
Sarah walked into a pharmacy and told the pharmacist that she needed
some cyanide.
The Pharmacist said, “Why in the world do you need cyanide?”
Sarah then explained she needed it to poison her husband. The pharmacist’s eyes got big and he said, “Lord, have mercy. I can’t give you cyanide to kill your husband! That’s against the law! I’ll lose my license; they’ll throw both of us in jail and all kinds of bad things will happen!
Absolutely not, you can NOT have any cyanide!”
Sarah reached into her purse and pulled out a picture of her husband in bed . . . with the pharmacist’s wife.
The pharmacist looked at the picture and replied, “Well, now. You didn’t tell me you had a prescription.”

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“Yo’ mama’s so fat, that when she went to Pluto it became a planet again!”

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Schrödinger was in the car too. The cop searches the trunk of the car and he finds a dead cat. He says, “Do you guys know that there’s a dead cat in your trunk?”

Schrödinger says, “Well, I do now!”

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Just did a search for “joke” in my work email…
I work with a bunch of chemists, so there were dozens of punny chemist jokes e.g.

When chemists die, they barium. It’s sad because all the good ones argon.
There is one engineer with a penchant for somewhat technical jokes:
Newton, Pascal, and Einstein are playing hide-and-go-seek in heaven. Einstein closes his eyes and starts counting. Pascal goes and hides behind a cloud. Newton stays where he is, and draws a 1mx1m square on the floor around him. Einstein finishes counting and turns around. "Ah ha, Newton! I found you!" "No you haven't, you've found one Newton over 1m2 . . . You found Pascal."
and
Q: What do journalists have in common with an LED? A: When they are reverse-biased, they aren’t very bright!
Mine tend towards the physicist ones like @Boundegar's
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Why did the semen cross the road? Because I wore the wrong pair of socks.

Maybe not strictly scientific, but I’m sure they can relate.

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Via smbc (I think)

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What crosses the road and glows: Chicken Kiev. (from the late 80’s)

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Roughly 85% by this guy

but data suggests there is an error margin of 10% either way.
No final numbers as such, the grant money ran out before we got there.

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Twelve plus twelve squared plus two-oh,
Plus three times the square root of four,
Divided by seven,
Plus five times eleven,
Makes the square of nine and no more.

How did I do?

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A biologist, a physicist and a mathematician meet at symposium and have a drink in the hotel lobby. While they are chatting they notice a man and a woman entering an empty elevator. A few minutes later they notice the same couple leaving the elevator again. This time they have a child with them.
Biologist: See? That’s reproduction.
Physcist: Nah, that’s probably just measuring inaccuracy.
Mathematician: That’s neither here nor there. Another person has to enter the elevator so it is empty again.

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