Engineer jokes
Found these - more anecdotal:
Is Hell exothermic or endothermic?
The following is an actual question given on a University of Washington
chemistry mid-term exam paper:
"Is Hell exothermic (gives off heat), or endothermic (absorbs heat)?
Support your answer with a proof."
Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle's Law
(gas cools off when it expands and heats up when it is compressed) or
some variant thereof. One student, however, wrote the following:
First, we need to know how the mass of Hell is changing in time. So, we
need to know the rate at which souls are moving into Hell and the rate
at which they are leaving. I think that we can safely assume that once
a soul gets to Hell, it will not leave. Therefore, no souls are
leaving. As for how many souls are entering Hell, let's look at the
different religions that exist in the world today. Some of these
religions state that if you are not a member of their religion, you
will go to Hell. Since, there are more than one of these religions, and
since people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project
that all people and all souls go to Hell. With birth and death rates as
they are, we can expect the number of souls in Hell to increase
exponentially. Now, we look at the rate of change of the volume in
Hell, because Boyle's Law states that in order for the temperature and
pressure in Hell to stay the same, the volume of Hell has to expand as
souls are added. This gives two possibilities:
If Hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls
enter Hell, then the temperature and pressure in Hell will increase
until all Hell breaks loose.
Of course, if Hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of
souls in Hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until Hell
freezes over.
So which is it?
If we accept the postulate given to me by Ms. Krissy Jones during my
Freshman year that "it will be a cold night in Hell before I sleep with
you" and take into account the fact that I still have not succeeded in
having sexual relations with her, then (2) cannot be true, and thus I
am sure that
Hell is exothermic.
This student got the only A.
The following concerns a question in a physics degree exam at the
University of Copenhagen:
"Describe how to determine the height of a skyscraper with a
barometer."
One student replied: "You tie a long piece of string to the neck of the
barometer, then lower the barometer from the roof of the skyscraper to
the ground. The length of the string plus the length of the barometer
will
equal the height of the building."
This highly original answer so incensed the examiner that the student
was failed immediately. He appealed on the grounds that his answer was
indisputably correct, and the university appointed an independent
arbiter
to decide the case. The arbiter judged that the answer was indeed
correct, but did not display any noticeable knowledge of physics. To
resolve the problem it was decided to call the student in and allow him
six minutes in
which to provide a verbal answer which showed at least a minimal
familiarity with the basic principles of physics.
For five minutes the student sat in silence, forehead creased in
thought. The arbiter reminded him that time was running out, to which
the student replied that he had several extremely relevant answers, but
couldn't make
up his mind which to use.
On being advised to hurry up, the student replied as follows:
"Firstly, you could take the barometer up to the roof of the
skyscraper, drop it over the edge, and measure the time it takes to
reach the ground. The height of the building can then be worked out
from the formula H =0.5g
x t squared. But bad luck on the barometer".
"Or if the sun is shining you could measure the height of the
barometer, then set it on end and measure the length of its shadow.
Then you measure the length of the skyscraper's shadow, and thereafter
it is a simple matter
of proportional arithmetic to work out the height of the skyscraper".
"But if you wanted to be highly scientific about it, you could tie a
short piece of string to the barometer and swing it like a pendulum,
first at ground level and then on the roof of the skyscraper. The
height is worked out by the difference in the gravitational restoring
force T = 2 pi sqrroot (l / g)".
"Or if the skyscraper has an outside emergency staircase, it would be
easier to walk up it and mark off the height of the skyscraper in
barometer lengths, then add them up"
..
"If you merely wanted to be boring and orthodox about it, of course,
you could use the barometer to measure the air pressure on the roof of
the skyscraper and on the ground, and convert the difference in
millibars into
meters to give the height of the building".
"But since we are constantly being exhorted to exercise independence of
mind and apply scientific methods, undoubtedly the best way would be to
knock on the janitor's door and say to him
'If you would like a nice new barometer, I will give you this one if
you tell me the height of this skyscraper'."
The student was Niels Bohr, the only Dane to win the Nobel prize for
Physics.
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