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This Dilbert cartoon really hits home, because I am both a physicist and an attorney!
So anybody want to incorporate in another universe? Want to buy some real estate in another dimension? Want to find a loophole using a worm-hole, I can help you with that! Trust me, I wrote a book about it.
I would have expected a cartoon like this from XKCD, not from Dilbert!
A lolcat is an image combining a photograph, most frequently of a cat, with a humorous and idiosyncratic caption in (often) broken English—a dialect which is known as “lolspeak”.
Physics isn’t immune to LOLcats either.
antigravity Lolcats
I wasn’t too sure about the Citibank stocks, but I thought I could count on the universal constants to stay unchanged during these trying times.
I figured I might not have cake, but at least I’ll have Pi.
Yesterday I was measuring the circumference of a circle and it seemed a little smaller than what I expected it to be. I checked and double checked and couldn’t figure out what the problem was.
And then it hit me; I checked Google/Physics and I was shocked to see 
that the value of Pi, which people have memorized up to 10,000 digits, has gone down to almost e.
Is nothing sacred anymore? If we are not careful, the value of Pi will go down to as low asphi, the golden ratio, and things will just spiral down from there.
We might need a $100B stimulus package to prop up the value of Pi.
Please leave a comment if you have noticed any unusual changes in the physical constants or your experiments due to recession.
Schrodinger’s cat refuses to die!
I like this one better:
The Problem:
Source : Brightly Wounded
Gamers (video game coders and players) are taking over the word “Physics” and I absolutely hate it!
I did a simple search for “car physics” on Google and 25% of the links on the first page are for coding the games and how to render the cars within the game!
For gamers to claim that what they are doing is physics is like the Italian plumber Mario to claim that he is the smartest cosmologist or most experienced astronaut ever because in Super Mario Galaxy , he traveled to seven different galaxies.
For gamers to claim that what they are doing is physics is like Salvador Dali to claim that his painting of warped clocks is same as warped space time of general relativity!
I know, some of you are going to point me to the definition of physics “the science of matter and energy and their interactions” and argue that “hey, the gamers are doing the same thing - they are implementing the relationship between the matter and energy and their interaction”; and of course you will be completely wrong.
Read the definition of Physics again - it is the science of matter and energy and their interactions. To decipher this definition, you need to understand what “science” is; and science is “the observation, identification, description, experimental investigation, and theoretical explanation of phenomena.” So Physics is “The observation, identification, description, experimental investigation, and theoretical explanation of matter and energy and their interactions”. Now tell me, if you think gamers are using the word physics in the same way.
Gamers take the crib sheet that physicists gave them and try to code it on the silicon chip or in the software. They might be doing the science of computer programming, but they are not doing science of matter and energy and their interactions!
I have a great deal of respect for their skill - I enjoy playing Grand Theft Auto, and Spores and Sims and Mario on Wii - and more power to them -but it is not the same as doing “physics”!
Major hardware developers are on the band wagon too: nVIDIA - Physics Graphic Cards; and cute ones like PhysX graphic cards - as if we wouldn’t notice. Reminds me of the Microsoft’s “The Intenet” on a disc; compare that to the nVidia or ATI “physics cards”.
Wow, all of Physics, on a chip with a little fan! how nice!
So call it something else - call it gPhysics, Gasics, Ghysics, iZysics, McPhysics, or something. Leave the word Physics alone.
I am warning you… if you continue to use the word Physics for some silly graphic tricks, we will have no choice but to withhold the laws of physics from you guys, like we do with cartoonists and for fine folks that draw anime.
Trust me, you don’t want a mob of angry physicists on your tail… we have black holes and all your bases are belong to us.
Some more physics related Facebook status messages
Here are the status messages from the first list of physicist’s facebook status messages:
* Sunny feels the chill from the the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) being cooled to 1.9 Kelvin (-271C; -456F) - colder than deep space. Where did I put my space heater?
* Sunny feels like he’s diagonally parked in a parallel universe.
* Sunny exists purely as a probability density function; he can be at more than one places at the same time.
* Basic research is what I am doing when I don’t know what I am doing.
* Sunny is still searching for Higgs.
* I abhor M theory with every fiber of my being.
* almost finished with the paper, I just has to dot my “i” and cross my “h”.
* Sunny has learned not to store plutonium in a tupperwear container.
* is pondering, if Schroedinger’s Cat walks into a forest, and no one is around to observe it, is he really in the forest?
* Wanted, dead AND alive, Schrödinger’s Cat.
A mutant fractal teddy bear, called Mandelbrot, brought into this world a few weeks ago by Captain Mouse
On December 25th
a savior was born.
He revealed eternal truth
bringing joy to millions.
He astonished the world
with his command over nature.
He changed history for ever!
Even if you are an atheist or a Bright, you don’t want to destroy the holiday season! So Richard Dawkins suggested that the birthday of Sir Isaac Newton, the founder of modern physics and mathematics, and arguably the greatest scientist of all time, could be used as an alternate excuse for a winter holiday!
Depending on the calendar you follow and how purist you want to be, Newton was born either on 25th December or 4th January.
Perfect! Who needs poinsettia, when you can have red apples? I’d rather teach kids about F=ma than tell them about a fat guy flying from the north pole in a sleigh being pulled by reindeers! I’d rather have a (dwarf) tree, dropping apples on my head, than have a Christmas tree shedding needles and being a fire hazard! Instead of fake snow, every house will have a real rainbow created using a prism! Instead of playing with candy canes, kids will be peering through telescope! I like the sound of that!
So, as suggested Richard Dawkins and by Olivia Judson of NYTimes, I support renaming Christmas holidays as Newton’s birthday festival.
In honor of Newton’s Birthday festival, I therefore propose the following song, to be sung to the tune of “The Twelve Days of Christmas.” For brevity, I include only the final verse. All together now!
On the tenth day of Newton,
My true love gave to me,
Ten drops of genius,
Nine silver co-oins,
Eight circling planets,
Seven shades of li-ight,
Six counterfeiters,
Cal-Cu-Lus!
Four telescopes,
Three Laws of Motion,
Two awful feuds,
And the discovery of gravity!
Happy Newton, everybody!
Just as an aside note; when I was thinking of a date to select for Talk Like a Physicist Day, I did consider using Newton’s birthdate as a potential TLP date, but rejected it precisely because it fell on the Christmas day. So I am glad to get a second chance.
Nature and nature’s laws lay hid in night;
God said “Let Newton be” and all was light.
Newton Christmas Cards are designed by John Powers and can be purchased here. The happy Newton Birthday cards are from Irregular Goods.
An infinite number of mathematicians walk into a bar. The first one orders a beer. The second orders half a beer. The third, a quarter of a beer. The bartender says “You’re all idiots”, and pours two beers.
Funny addition by CadMonkey at StumbleUpon
…then they asked for separate tabs…”An infinite number of mathematicians get thrown out of a bar”
The latest smear: “He pals around with Theorists”
At least, they didn’t say “He pals around with string theorists”, or even worse, “He pals around with cosmologists”.
There is a crisis going on, there is enough negativity; we don’t have time for dark energy in the election.
Source PhD Comics
