Attention all people who found this site by googling "journal bearing." And selected people in my real life.

Math and physics joke thread at Volokh.  Here's one I hadn't heard before:

Q. What do you get when you cross a grape and an elephant?

A. Grape elephant sine theta. 

Q. What do you get when you cross a grape and a mountain climber?

A. You can't -- a mountain climber is a scalar.

Friends will see immediately that this joke is not as elegant as it could be, although it has potential.  I suggest two corrections, which can be applied as independent operators.

First, obviously, the correct answer to the first part of the joke is pronounced "magnitude of grape magnitude of elephant sin theta N" --- it goes without saying that N is the the unit vector that's perpendicular both to grape and to elephant, so no need to add unnecessary words by belaboring that point.  Anyone who might think the joke is funny will know what you mean.

Second, the whole thing is made better by replacing "grape" and "elephant," respectively, with two objects recognizable as "vectors" --- say, a mosquito and a rat.

Don't you agree?

Here are two more, somewhat similar to each other, that I liked.                         

Heisenberg is stopped for speeding.

"Do you have any idea how fast you were going?" asks the cop.

"No. But I know exactly where I am."

                        ***

On a similar note,

On a bright red bumper sticker: "If this sticker is blue, you're driving too fast."

I would have posted one, but somebody had already put up the one about the snakes.

Comments

[Greg Popcak]

So, Schrodinger goes into a grocery store and never comes out. Apparently he got stuck in the pet aisle trying to decide whether or not to buy cat food.

(Pause for sound of crickets.)

Seriously though, I appreciated your comparison of our work with Neufeld. If you have a mind to, send me an email. I'd be interested in touching base.

God Bless,
Dr. P.

[bearing]

Email going out...