If you didn't get the joke, you probably didn't understand the science behind it. If this is the case, it's a chance for you to learn a little science.
Science Joke 1:
A geologist's favorite saying:
"Igneous is bliss, but being sedimentary is not gneiss."
See explanation
Science Joke 2:
Murphy's Ten Laws for Experimentalists:
In a scientific experiment,
(1) if something can go wrong, it will do so just before your grant is up for review;
(2) if the reading on your detector is correct, then you have forgot to plug it in;
(3) if several things can go wrong then they will do so all at the same time;
(4) if nothing can go wrong with your experiment, something still will;
(5) left unto itself, your experiment will go from bad to worse; on the other hand, if you pay attention to the experiment then it will take three times longer to complete than you thought it would;
(6) Nature is both subtle and malicious (Murphy stole this one from Albert Einstein);
(7) a straight line will never fit your data, and using a wiggly line will result in the rejection by referees of the publication of work;
(8) if you make a great discovery today, you will find a major error in your methods tomorrow (experienced experimentalists call this effect "here today, gone tomorrow");
(9) in contrast to a radio, banging your apparatus when you are at peak frustration will not fix it but permanently break it (for this reason, it is important for experimentalists to remain calm at all times);
(10) when your experiment is just about to succeed, you will run out of grant money.
In short, in a scientific experiment, anything that can go wrong will go wrong.
By the way, the staff of Jupiter Scientific has a proof of Murphy's Law but it is too long to fit in the margin of a webpage.
See explanation
Science Joke 3:
In a fifth-grade class, a teacher asked students various science questions, of which the following were the funniest:
Teacher: "What is the definition of a protein?'
Student: "A protein is something that is made up of mean old acids."
Teacher: "What kind of tails do opossums have?"
Student: "Reprehensible ones"
Teacher: "What is the spinal column?"
Student: "A long bunch of bones. The head sits on the top and you sit on the bottom."
Teacher: "How long does it take the Earth to rotate about its axis?"
Student: "The Earth makes a resolution once every 24 hours."
Teacher: "That's wishful thinking."
See explanation
Science Joke 4:
This is a true story:
An eighth-grade science teacher spent a class explaining the difficulties of doing experiments. She discussed such things as background noise, equipment malfunction, conceptual mistakes and so on. At the end of the hour, she summarized the situation rather pessimistically as "Badness comes in waves." The students were then asked to go home, research the topic further and write an essay entitled, "The Difficult Nature of Doing Scientific Experiments." One student wrote a rather good report but ended it with the sentence: "Baldness comes in waves."
Science Joke 5:
David Letterman's Top Ten Reasons Why Network News Producers Do Not Give Science More Air time:
Number Ten: They are unable to locate file footage of the Big Bang.
Number Nine: They think that high-temperature superconductors are too hot to handle.
Number Eight: El Niño is covered by the weather department.
Number Seven: They already did the O.J. DNA story.
Number Six: They are unable to find information about semiconductors in the music section of the library.
Number Five: They are afraid of reporting on dark matter because they think it is contagious.
Number Four: They are waiting for cold fusion.
Number Three: They think that the greatest scientific achievement is Tang.
Number Two: They wouldn't know the superconducting supercollider from a hole in the ground.
And the number one reason why network news producers do not give science more air time:
Scientists are from Mars . . . Journalists from Venus.
See explanation
Science Joke 6:
Referee report: "This paper contains much that is new and much that is true. Unfortunately, that which is true is not new and that which is new is not true."
See explanation
Astronomers do IT all night.
Chemists do IT by bonding.
Newton did IT with force.
Eighteenth century physicists did IT with rigid bodies.
Maxwell did IT with magnetism.
Volta did IT with a jolt.
Watt did IT with power.
Joule did IT with energy.
Ohm did IT with resistance.
Pascal did IT under pressure.
Hooke did IT using springs.
Coulomb got all charged up about IT.
Hertz did IT frequently.
Boltzmann did IT in heat.
Ampere let IT flow.
For Franklin, IT was an electrifying experience.
Edison claims to have invented IT.
When Richter did IT, the Earth shook.
For Darwin, IT was natural.
Freud did IT in his sleep.
Mendel studied the consequences of IT.
When Wegener did IT, continents moved.
Classical physicists do IT in perfectly uniform harmonic motion.
Heisenberg was never sure whether he even did IT.
Bohr did IT in an excited state.
Pauli did IT but excluded his friends.
Schrödinger did IT in waves.
Bose did IT with partners.
Einstein did IT on a curved surface.
Oort did IT in a cloud.
Hubble did IT in the dark.
Watson and Crick got all wound up about IT.
Cosmologists do IT in a big bang.
Theorists do IT on paper.
Wigner did IT in a group.
Richter and Ting did IT with charm.
Astrophysicists do IT with young starlets.
Planetary scientists do IT with Uranus.
Electron microscopists do IT 100,000 times.
Feynman did IT in fields.
Hawking wrote a brief history of IT.
And supersymmetric theorists do IT with sleptons.
Science Joke 8:
Q: What's the difference between a mathematician and an experimentalist?
A: A mathematician thinks that two points are enough to define a straight line while an experimentalist wants more data.
See explanation
Science Joke 9:
Q: What did the post doctorate study when he changed fields from particle physics to geology?
A: Earthquarks.
See explanation
Science Joke 10:
The Unjust Salary Theorem asserts that scientists can never earn as much as sales people. This theorem is proved as follows. Start by using the physics formula
Power = Work / Time
Now you probably have heard that Knowledge is Power and Time is Money. Substitute these tautologies into the formula for power to obtain
Knowledge = Work/Money
Solving for Money, one finds
Money = Work / Knowledge.
Therefore, the less you know, the more you make.
Science Joke 11:
A man, complaining of headaches, entered a hospital for diagnostic tests.
A doctor examined the results for a brain scan and told the patient,
"I have bad news and good news for you. The bad news is that you have a serious brain disease
and will die without treatment.
The good news is that this hospital has developed a new procedure for brain transplants
and due to a car accident this morning two 'fresh' brains are available:
one is from a taxi driver and the other is from a scientist.
The brain of the taxi driver costs $225,000, while that of the scientist is only $29.95."
Puzzled, the patient asked, "Why is the scientist's brain was so much cheaper?"
The doctor replied, "It's used."
Science Joke 13:
A scientist who enjoyed considerable success during the first half of his life was eventually knighted. His name was Sir Ramick. Unfortunately, he developed a mental illness in his early fifties in which he had a split personality: he was a scientist most of the time and a murderer during brief "bad periods".
During his first "bad period", he got into an argument with a taxi driver over the amount of a fare and sliced the driver's throat. He went to jail, was prosecuted, found guilty and placed on death row. On the day of his electrocution, the executioner asked Sir Ramick if he had any last requests. He responded, "I would like to eat 10 bananas before I die." It seemed like a harmless request and so Sir Ramick was granted his wish. He promptly ate 10 bananas and said confidently, "Put me in the chair now." When the executioner flipped the switch, nothing happened. Now, in the country where Sir Ramick resided, there was an unusual law that said if the execution of a death-row inmate fails due to an act of God or any other reason then he should be set free. Sir Ramick happily left the execution facility and went home to work on a new science project.
A month later, he went for a walk during a beautiful evening lit by a full moon. Unfortunately, his bad personality emerged. He grabbed a teen-aged boy and threw him into a wide river. The boy was found dead the next day and Sir Ramick was again imprisoned. On the day of his execution, he again requested to eat ten bananas and again the electrocution apparatus failed to kill him. He exited the facility smiling.
Two months later, the scientist went to church and shot a nun. The community was in an uproar. How could such a violent man be allowed to roam the streets, the citizens complained. They signed a petition to repeal the execution loophole law but it would be at least six months before the government would be able to respond. In the execution facility, Sir Ramick met the executioner for a third time and requested to eat 10 bananas as before. Knowing that Sir Ramick was a superb scientist, the executioner suspected that the scientist somehow was using his scientific knowledge to escape death. After a discussion with other members at the execution facility, Sir Ramick was granted his wish to eat 10 bananas for a third time. And again, the machine failed to kill him when the switch was flipped.
Just before going out the facility's main entrance, the executioner approached Sir Ramick and asked him, "I need to know what's going on. Is it the bananas?" To which, the scientist replied, "No, I'm just a bad conductor."
See explanation
Science Joke 14:
The Official Unabashed Scientific Dictionary defines asymmetry as a place where you bury dead people.
See explanation
Science Joke 16:
In "The Boscombe Valley Mystery",
Sherlock Holmes and Watson were in hot pursuit of a suspect
when they came to an open outcrop.
Watson: "Holmes, what kind of rock is this?"
Sherlock Holmes: "Why that’s sedimentary, my dear Watson." See explanation
Science Joke 17:
Advice to a young experimentalist: If at first you do succeed, try to hide your astonishment.
Science Joke 18:
Q: What does a scientist create when he goes to the bathroom?
A: Brownian motion
See explanation
Science Joke 19:
H5N1 walks in on a party and is greeted by an elegant lady in a satin dress.
H5N1: "Do you mind if I join in?"
Lady: "We don't like your kind around here."
H5N1: "Well, you're certainly not a very good host."
See explanation
Science Joke 20:
The Official Unabashed Scientific Dictionary defines a thesaurus to be a mesozoic reptile with a large vocabulary.
(A paleontologist's reaction to this joke: "Why I didn't know that the mesozoic reptiles could talk.")
Science Joke 21:
A question from the audience for a neuroscientist during a recent conference: "Could we have your thoughts on telepathy?"
This jokes on this page were compiled by the staff of
Jupiter Scientific,
an organization devoted to the promotion of
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and other means of communication.
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