Weird Science

Science and Technology.

Hello again, Everybody!
     With 'Dolly' the cloned sheep and the coming of the Hale-
Bopp comet over the past few weeks, science and technology are at
the top of the news again.  Of course, there's the usual amount
of nonsense that goes along with science reporting.  Writers and
editors don't seem to know much about science, so we have the
'National Enquirer' approach to science, with attacking space
comets and weird alien creatures.  I guess it's time to see how
much damage we can do with Sunday Funnies!  One thing that I have
noticed in scanning down the list of names here is that
practically all of you have some connection with the sciences and
all of you have an above average understanding of technology.  I
feel privileged to be writing for such a select group!
     Thanks to Bob Martens and Peter Adler for their
contributions to Funnies.  This craziness would be impossible
without your help.  Hope that you are having a good start to
Spring, and that things are going well for all of you.
     Have a great week (And Happy Easter, too!),


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HOW TO IDENTIFY SCIENCE PROFESSORS:


Chemistry:  
     Wears a white lab coat.  This may actually be clean but does
     not have to be.  P-chem profs have a brand new coat that has
     never been in the lab; polymer chemistry profs have strange
     glop on their coat, and introductory chemistry professors
     have acid holes.

Physics: 
     Wears blue jeans and a flannel shirt.  May sometimes forget
     to wear shirt altogether, but only if male.  If the
     professor is wearing blue jeans and suspenders, that person
     is a physicist.

Engineering:
     Dresses like a physics professor.  To accurately determine
     one from the other, you must check the contents of their
     pockets.  Engineering professors are usually carrying
     hardware from whatever project they are working on at the
     moment.  This also allows you to determine the branch of
     engineering to which they belong.

Biology: 
     Sometimes wears a lab coat, though this is usually the sign
     of a biochemist.  Marine biologists walk around in hip boots
     for no good reason, even in the middle of winter.  They are
     apt to wear grey slacks and smell like fish, as opposed to
     most biologists, who smell strongly of formalin. 
     Microbiology instructors go around in spotless white coats,
     refuse to drink beer on tap, and wipe all their silverware
     before using it.

Computer Science:
     Many Computer Science profs are from India or Pakistan.  You
     can tell by the gestures and accents.  Strangely, many of
     the American Computer Science professors tend to pick up
     Indian accents which confounds more specific identification. 
     Computer Science students only come out at night, and, if
     not born with dark skin, tend to take on a pasty appearance. 
     CS professors do not use computers and therefore can be
     easily identified by their comparative good health with
     respect to their students.

Math:
     Math profs are like physics professors except without any
     practical use.  A math professor will have only books and
     pencils in his office, as opposed to the piles of broken
     equipment that physicists keep.

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THE MATHEMATICIAN, THE PHYSICIST AND THE ENGINEER
   How to tell them apart...

     A mathematician, a physicist, and an engineer were all given
a red rubber ball and told to find the volume. 

     -    The mathematician carefully measured the diameter and
          evaluated a triple integral.  

     -    The physicist filled a beaker with water, put the ball
          in the water, and measured the total displacement. 

     -    The engineer looked up the model and serial numbers in
          his red-rubber-ball table.

                    -----------------------

   On the results:

     -    The engineer thinks of his equations as an
          approximation to reality.

     -    The physicist thinks reality is an approximation to his
          equations.

     -    The mathematician doesn't care.

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SCIENCE SAYINGS -


     -  "The juvenile sea squirt wanders through the sea
     searching for a suitable rock or hunk of coral to cling to
     and make its home for life.  For this task, it has a
     rudimentary nervous system.  When it finds its spot and
     takes root, it doesn't need its brain anymore so it eats it! 
     (It's rather like getting tenure.)"
          -- Daniel Dennett, Consciousness Explained_, p. 177


     -  "It is well to remember that the entire universe, with
     one trifling exception, is composed of others."
          -- John Andrew Holmes


     - "The very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in
     common.  Instead of altering their views to fit the facts,
     they alter the facts to fit their views...which can be very
     uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the facts that
     needs altering."
          -- Doctor Who, Face of Evil_


     - The reason that every major university maintains a
     department of mathematics is that it is cheaper to do this
     than to institutionalize all those people."


     - Time is nature's way of keeping everything from happening
     all at once.


     - "In earlier times, they had no statistics, and so they had
     to fall back on lies."
          -- Stephen Leacock


     - "All science is either physics or stamp collecting."
          -- E. Rutherford


     - On a paper submitted by a physicist colleague: "This isn't
     right.  This isn't even wrong." 
          -- Wolfgang Pauli


     - "Organic chemistry is the chemistry of carbon compounds.
     Biochemistry is the study of carbon compounds that crawl."
          -- Mike Adams


     - "First Law of Laboratories: Hot glass and cold glass look
     alike!"
          -- James Pauer


     -  A theory is something nobody believes, except the person
     who made it.  An experiment is something everybody believes,
     except the person who made it.


     -  "Never express yourself more clearly than you think."
          ---Neils Bohr


     -  "The symbols are so illuminating that the fact that the
     text is incomprehensible doesn't much matter"  
          -- A.N. Prior


     - "Are tectonic plates dishwasher-safe?"
          -- Herb Caen, S. F. Chronicle, 8/12/93


     - Entropy isn't what it used to be.


     - Heisenberg may have been here.


     - Descartes thought he was here.


     - University President:  "Why is it that you physicists
     always require so much expensive equipment?  Now the
     Department of Mathematics requires nothing but money for
     paper, pencils, and erasers...and the Department of
     Philosophy is better still.  It doesn't even ask for
     erasers."  
          -- [Told by Isaac Asimov]


     -  'The Creation of the Universe was made possible by a
     grant from Texas Instruments.'
          -- Message at the start of a science show on PBS
     [ Now there's a company with _Power_! ]

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NOT THE TRUE FACTS DEPARTMENT...

     High School and College students often hate science classes. 
Probably because the sciences can't be faked unless you know more
about the subject than needed to answer the question.  So it gets
pretty funny when they try to bluff their way through.  Here are
some examples of actual answers collected from science tests:

--------------------

     "H2O is hot water, and CO2 is cold water"

     "Water is composed of two gins, Oxygin and Hydrogin.  Oxygin
     is pure gin.  Hydrogin is gin and water."

     "A super-saturated solution is one that holds more than it
     can hold."

     "When you smell an odorless gas, it is probably carbon
     monoxide."

     "Liter: A nest of young puppies."

     "The tides are a fight between the Earth and moon.  All
     water tends towards the moon, because there is no water in
     the moon, and nature abhors a vacuum.  I forget where the
     sun joins in this fight."

     "Mushrooms always grow in damp places and so they look like
     umbrellas."

     "Germinate: To become a naturalized German."

     "The pistol of a flower is its only protection against
     insects."

     "When you breath, you inspire.  When you do not breath, you
     expire."

     "The alimentary canal is located in the northern part of
     Indiana."

     "The body consists of three parts- the brainium, the borax
     and the abominable cavity.  The brainium contains the brain,
     the borax contains the heart and lungs, and the abominable
     cavity contains the bowls, of which there are five - a, e,
     i, o, and u."

     "A fossil is an extinct animal.  The older it is, the more
     extinct it is."

     "Equator: A menagerie lion running around the Earth through
     Africa."

     "Planet: A body of Earth surrounded by sky."

     "Charles Darwin was a naturalist who wrote the organ of the
     species."

     "To keep milk from turning sour: Keep it in the cow."

     "Benjamin Franklin produced electricity by rubbing cats
     backwards."

     "Three kinds of blood vessels are arteries, vanes and
     caterpillars."

     "To remove air from a flask, fill it with water, tip the
     water out, and put the cork in quick before the air can get
     back in."

     "The process of turning steam back into water again is
     called conversation."

     "The cuckoo bird does not lay his own eggs."

     "To prevent conception when having intercourse, the male
     wears a condominium."

     "To collect fumes of sulfur, hold a deacon over a flame in a
     test tube."

     "Parallel lines never meet, unless you bend one or both of
     them."

     "Algebraical symbols are used when you do not know what you
     are talking about."

     "Geometry teaches us to bisex angles."

     "A circle is a line which meets its other end without
     ending."

     "Before giving a blood transfusion, find out if the blood is 
     affirmative or negative."

     "The moon is a planet just like the Earth, only it is even
     deader."

     "Artificial insemination is when the farmer does it to the
     cow instead of the bull."

     "We believe that the reptiles came from the amphibians by
     spontaneous generation and study of rocks."

     "English sparrows and starlings eat the farmers grain and
     soil his corpse."

     "By self-pollination, the farmer may get a flock of
     long-haired sheep."

     "Respiration is composed of two acts, first inspiration, and
     then expectoration."
          [ 'Expectoration' is spitting(!) ]

     "Dew is formed on leaves when the sun shines down on them
     and makes them perspire."

     "Vegetative propagation is the process by which one
     individual manufactures another individual by accident."

     "A triangle which has an angle of 135 degrees is called an
     obscene triangle."

     "Blood flows down one leg and up the other."

     "A person should take a bath once in the summer, and not
     quite so often in the winter."

     "The hookworm larvae enters the human body through the
     soul."

     "When you haven't got enough iodine in your blood you get a
     glacier."

     "It is a well-known fact that a deceased body harms the
     mind."

     "Humans are more intelligent than beasts because the human
     branes have more convulsions."

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Last Aid Department:

     "For asphyxiation: Apply artificial respiration until the
     patient is dead."

     For fractures:  to see if the limb is broken, wiggle it
     gently back and forth.

     For head colds:  use an agonizer to spray the nose until it
     drops in your throat

     For nosebleed: put the nose much lower than the body.

     For drowning:  climb on top of the person and move up and
     down to make artificial perspiration.

     "For fainting:  rub the person's chest, or if a lady, rub
     her arm above the hand instead.  Or put the head between the
     knees of the nearest medical doctor."

     To remove dust from the eye, pull the eye down over the
     nose.

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