Collage 237               H u m o u r N e t               21 MAR 96

Sorry, but this opener will deal primarily with Admin topics; plus,
I have a rather large Collage on tap, so I need to keep it short. :-)

First of all, *many* thanks to those of you who responded to
yesterday's announcement that Operation Joint Endeavor soldiers in
Kaposvar, Hungary, have been added to HumourNet's "Distinguished
Members" list. I have now received enough military humor to keep me
going for a while, and I promise to produce an Operation Joint
Endeavor Collage as soon as I can sort through all the material.
Hopefully, that will be before the Operation officially ends. :-)

Second, I have been trying to track down the elusive subject-lines-
disappearing-from-HumourNet-mail problem. The awfully helpful folks
at CREN have made some suggestions, which I will be trying out over
the next few days. If you receive your Collages sans "Subject:"
lines, please drop me a note to let me know.

<End ADMIN Note> <Start Short Opener> <Overcome Writer's Block>

Barry in Australia *swears* that the following exchange actually
occurred in a meeting of the Board of Governors of Charles Sturt
University (in NSW):

"A man was boasting that he was in a horse-racing syndicate that
had won three straight races -- to which his friend replied, 'What
about the *fixed* ones?'"

Ah, the educational system. Apparently, Australia's isn't much
different from the U.S. system -- except that *we* fix basketball
games. :-)

And so we come to another education-related Collage....

For the students on the list, we start off by helping you identify
whether you're a physics major or not: "You Might Be a Physics Major"
is provided by the still-ever-prolific Lorraine (herself an educator
down there in THE REALLY BIG STATE).

And working toward "prolific" status is Mark in the U.K., who sends
us "Physics Redefined" (this one's for the true physicists out there)
and "Flying Cats" (for the rest of us).

Many thanks to Mark, Lorraine and Barry. It's the first-ever (I think)
"Physics Collage."

Enjoy!

- Vince Sabio
  HumourNet Moderator
  HumourNet@telephonet.com
____________________________________________________________________
          Opener (above) Copyright 1996 by Vincent Sabio
  Permission is hereby granted to forward or post this "Collage";
  please observe the guidelines stated at the end of the message.
____________________________________________________________________

SUBJ: You Might Be a Physics Major If ...
By Jason Lisle

Due to the enormous workload involved in physics classes, combined
with stress and lack of sleep, physics students often forget (either
by accident, defense mechanism, or intentionally) what their major
really is.  Thus, as a physics major, I took it upon myself to
create a small list of indicators to help us remember what our major
is. Thus, YOU MIGHT BE A PHYSICS MAJOR IF ...

* you have no life - and you can PROVE it mathematically.

* you know vector calculus but you can't remember how to do long
division.

* you chuckle whenever anyone says "centrifugal force."

* you've actually used every single function on your graphing
calculator.

* it is sunny and 70 degrees outside, and you are working on a
computer.

* you always do homework on Friday nights.

* you know how to integrate a chicken and can take the derivative of
water.

* you've calculated that the World Series actually diverges.

* you hesitate to look at something because you don't want to break
down its wave function.

* you have a pet named after a scientist.

* you laugh at jokes about mathematicians.

* the Humane society has you arrested because you actually performed
the Schrodinger's Cat experiment.

* you can translate English into binary.

* you can't remember what's behind the science-building door that
says "Exit."

* you have to bring a jacket with you in the middle of summer,
because there's a wind-chill factor in the lab.

* you are completely addicted to caffeine.

* you avoid doing anything because you don't want to contribute to
the eventual heat-death of the universe.

* you consider ANY non-science course "easy."

* when your professor asks you where your homework is, you claim to
have accidentally determined its momentum so precisely that,
according to Heisenberg, it could be anywhere in the universe.

* the "fun" center of your brain has deteriorated from lack of use.

* you assume that a "horse" is a "sphere" in order to make the math
easier.

* you understood more than five of these indicators.

* you made a hard copy of this list, and posted it on your door.

If more than twelve of these indicators apply to you, there is good
reason to suspect that you might be a physics major. Kill yourself
before it's too late.

========================[ H U M O U R N E T ]=======================

SUBJ: Physics Redefined

A SCALAR QUANTITY has no directional property -- e.g., any student's
car.

SYSTEMATIC ERRORS are those produced by incorrect calibration,
zeroing, or use of measuring instruments. They are not reduced by
panicking.

RANDOM ERRORS are those produced by borrowing a calculator.

THE UNCERTAINTY of a value increases the longer a student looks at
it. This is an excellent reason for not checking answers.

THE PRINCIPLE OF MOMENTS states that every couple has its moment
and, whilst coupling only takes a moment, the resultant talk lasts
much longer. NB Coupling in the back seat of a car will produce
SIMPLE HARMONIC MOTION which may be lightly damped.

THE PRINCIPLE OF CONSERVATION OF WORK states that homework need
never be created nor destroyed but may be bought, sold or copied.

ENERGY is the capacity to do work. POWER is the rate of doing work.
INERTIA is the inability to start doing work.

The RESISTANCE of a female student is the ratio V/I where V is the
value of the PD (proposed date) required and I is the current
Intensity of attraction felt by that student.

OHM'S LAW states that the resistance of a female student is constant
provided the student is neither heated nor stressed -- both of which
lower resistance.

The CAPACITANCE of a student is the ratio Q/V where Q is the
Quantity of ethanol consumed and V is the Vomit produced.

The BOOKWIDTH of an amplifier is a measure of the quantity of text
books it replaces on a student's shelf.

DENSITY of a student is the ratio of time spent learning basic
definitions to number of definitions learned.

PRESSURE on a student is given by INERTIA*DENSITY/TIME_TO_NEXT_TEST

HOOKES LAW states that -- provided an exam is not approaching --
going fishing is better than working

The YOUNG'S MODULUS of a student is the ratio of stress produced by
an approaching exam to the strain of working throughout the course,
provided that the academic ability of the student has not been
exceeded.

PLASTIC DEFORMATION has occurred if, when your plastic is removed
from a hole in the wall, a permanent debit remains in your account.

THE SPECIFIC LATENT ENERGY OF VAPOURISATION OF A TEACHER is the
energy required to be applied in order to make a teacher boil over.
The value tends to be lower on Friday afternoons.

EMISSION LINE SPECTRA are the spectra obtained from excited students
and only have certain definite frequencies dependent upon the energy
and the degree of excitability of the students involved. NB Redheads
cannot exist in the ground state.

The ACTIVITY of a class is its rate of doing work. It decreases as
work is done according to the relation dW/dt=-kW where the decay
constant k depends upon the proximity of a major exam.

The HALF-LIFE of a lesson is the time it takes half the students
present to forget all they learned during the lesson. Usually
expressed in nanoseconds.

NEWTON'S LAWS OF MOTION:

1. Every car continues at rest or moves with constant velocity
unless acted upon by an unbalanced driver.

2. When a car is acted on by an unbalanced driver it will
experience a rate of change of shape proportional to the volume of
sound from the tape player.

3. Every driver's inaction is followed by an equal and opposite
over-reaction.

========================[ H U M O U R N E T ]=======================

SUBJ: Flying Cats!

This question was posed to the Usenet Oracle:

If you drop a buttered piece of bread, it will fall on the floor
butter-side down. If a cat is dropped from a window or other high
and towering place, it will land on its feet. But what if you
attach a buttered piece of bread, butter-side up to a cat's back and
toss them both out the window? Will the cat land on its feet? Or
will the butter splat on the ground?

And in response, thus spake the Oracle:

Even if you are too lazy to do the experiment yourself you should be
able to deduce the obvious result. The laws of butterology demand
that the butter must hit the ground, and the equally strict laws of
feline aerodynamics demand that the cat can not smash its furry
back. If the combined construct were to land, nature would have no
way to resolve this paradox. Therefore it simply does not fall.

That's right, you clever mortal (well, as clever as a mortal can
get), you have discovered the secret of antigravity! A buttered cat
will, when released, quickly move to a height where the forces of
cat-twisting and butter repulsion are in equilibrium. This
equilibrium point can be modified by scraping off some of the
butter, providing lift, or removing some of the cat's limbs,
allowing descent.

Most of the civilized species of the Universe already use this
principle to drive their ships while within a planetary system. The
loud humming heard by most sighters of UFOs is, in fact, the purring
of several hundred tabbies.

The one obvious danger is, of course, if the cats manage to eat the
bread off their backs they will instantly plummet. Of course the
cats will land on their feet, but this usually doesn't do them much
good, since right after they make their graceful landing several
tons of red-hot starship and pissed-off aliens crash on top of them.

[Editor's Note: The "Usenet Oracle" has had a bit of an identity
crisis lately, and -- as a result -- now prefers to be known as the
*Internet* Oracle. Talk about a *megalomaniac*.... :-) </vs>]

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