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The Witty Author Of The 'The Martian' Told Us His Favorite Science Jokes — And They're Nerd-a-riffic
Photo of Andy Weir. Uploaded by Scewing to WikipediaThe biggest sci-fi hit of 2015 all began with Andy Weir and his best-selling book "The Martian," which is a thrilling survival story based on the planet Mars.
Weir is a software engineer by profession and American novelist by hobby. So, he's got a mind for science.
But he's also a wise-creaking jokester, just like his novel's hero, Mark Watney.
In celebration of the film's release to Digital HD and 3D Blu-ray on Dec. 22, Weir recently spoke with Business Insider, and we couldn't help but appeal to his comedic side.
So, we asked him to tell us a couple of his favorite science jokes, and he didn't disappoint!
While Weir could have a crowd of mathematicians and physicists chuckling with his collection of ready-upon-request jokes, the rest of us might need a quick science refresher to appreciate the punch lines.
Here are two of Weir's favorite science jokes with a brief science refresher:
Andy Weir Joke #1The joke starts out:
"An ion walks into a bar and says 'I think I left an electron here last night.' And the bartender say 'Are you sure?'"
Kondor83/ShutterstockWhat does the ion say?
Here's a basic review of atoms and ions. See if you can guess what the ion says as you refresh your brain with some chemistry.
At a basic level, atoms are made of electrons that orbit around a nucleus. But sometimes atoms gain or lose electrons.
When that happens, we call that atom an ion. When an ion gains an electron it is negatively charged and when it loses an electron, it's positively charged.
Here's the full joke:
"An ion walks into a bar and says 'I think I left an electron here last night.' And the bartender says 'Are you sure?' And the ion says 'I'm positive.'"
Andy Weir Joke #2The joke begins like this:
"What do you get when you cross a mountain climber with a mosquito?"
A member of the "Sibspas" Siberian search and rescue group dressed as Santa Claus (L), shakes hands with his teammate, dressed as Father Frost, the Russian equivalent of Santa Claus, as they climb to the rock named "The Fourth Stolb" (the Fourth Pillar) at the Stolby National Nature Reserve during a training session of the Russian Emergencies Ministry outside Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk, Russia. Reuters/Ilya NaymushinSee if you can guess after this brief review of mathematics.
This joke involves what mathematicians call scalars and vectors.
Basically, scalars and vectors are quantities that mathematicians and physicists use to express the world around us.
What you need to know is that you can multiply vectors together using a "cross product", but vectors can't be combined with scalars in this way. It's just a mathematical no no.
Here's the full joke:
"What do you get when you cross a mountain climber with a mosquito? Nothing! You can't cross a scalar with a vector."
We know that Weir's science jokes are a bit on the nerdy side, but that's why we enjoy them!
We wouldn't expect anything less from a guy who wrote the book that spawned one of the most scientifically accurate sci-fi films of all time.
Over A Million People Helped Decide That This Is The Funniest Joke Ever
Humor is, of course, a subjective thing. There are always going to be jokes that you think are funny but others don't, and vice versa. Our comedy sensibilities are a combination of a lot of things, including life experiences that may make us more sensitive to certain subjects and less sensitive to others. With all that in mind, can there really be a "funniest joke"?
Based on the results of a survey taken by over 1.5 million people, the answer is apparently yes. YouTube channel AsapSCIENCE recently dove into the science of comedy, crawling through the data and offering it up in an easily digestible way.
The survey that participants took asked them a bunch of questions about their sense of humor. It also had them rate jokes, asking them how much they liked each joke or how humorous they felt it was. Based on these responses, we're left with the "funniest joke in the world," according to the data.
Some of the more interesting pieces of information that came out of the survey include the ideal joke length. Based on the data, the most effective jokes are roughly 103 letters long. That's quite brief, but perhaps that's what makes them work so well? Additionally, jokes are funniest to any given individual at approximately 6:03 p.M. Local time. It's not clear exactly why that is, but perhaps it has something to do with the general sense of relaxation that comes at the end of the workday and the transition to the evening.
As far as what the funniest joke in the world is… well, go ahead and watch the video above and you'll have it presented to you as a comedian might. Reading the joke probably won't offer the same kind of impact, so it's best to hear it out loud.
Now, I'm no comedian, but I know what I find funny. The joke deemed the funniest isn't a bad joke by any means. It has a clear punchline and an easily-understood premise. It's fine… but the funniest joke ever? Eh, I'm going to go ahead and say no. Perhaps I just need to listen to it again at 6:03 p.M.?
In any case, as I've already said, humor is subjective. Nobody is going to love every joke and there's no joke that everyone will universally adore. Find what makes you laugh and stick with it because this is one case where the science falls well short of concrete.
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This Is Neil DeGrasse Tyson's Favorite Science Joke
Cindy Ord/Getty Images for FOX
If you've ever listened to StarTalk radio, then you'll know that its host, famed astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, definitely has a sense of humor.His humor was not lost on Business Insider when we asked him in a recent interview about his favorite science joke.
DeGrasse Tyson first heard this joke first told by science comedian Brian Malow.
Here's how it starts:
"A Higgs boson walks into a church."
If you're unfamiliar with the term "Higgs boson," you might know it by another name: the "God" particle.
(No self-respecting scientist would ever call it this, but that hasn't stopped media outlets from preserving the term.)
In order to get the joke, you must first understand the Higgs.
A Higgs boson is a type of subatomic particle that's about 100 times smaller than a proton. Scientists used the world's most powerful particle accelerator to see it for the first time in 2012, and their discovery was awarded the Physics Nobel the following year.
The reason this discovery was Nobel-worthy is because Higgs bosons come with a special ability: They help give other subatomic particles their mass. Without the discovery of a Higgs boson, physicists would not understand how particles, like those that make up you, me, and the billions of galaxies in the universe, could exist.
Back to the joke:
"Higgs boson walks into a church, and the priest says, 'I'm sorry we don't allow Higgs bosons to come to churches.' And [the Higgs] says, 'But without me, you can't have mass.'"
Just to make sure this joke is politically correct, deGrasse Tyson mentioned that he's tested this joke on a Jesuit priest. "He said it was cool, so that gives us total clearance," Tyson said with a laugh.This joke is particularly timely because the machine that first detected a Higgs boson in 2012, the Large Hadron Collider, is scheduled to turn back on - after two years of heavy maintenance - by the end of this month.
By mid-summer the LHC should be at max power, which is twice the power it operated at during its first run from 2009 through 2012. Physicists hope to explore the properties of Higgs bosons in more detail as well as discover some more never-before-seen particles like those that physicists think make up the mysterious material called dark matter.
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