An academic problemIn a high school gym class, all the girls are lined up against one wall, and all the boys against the opposite wall. Every ten seconds, they walk toward each other exactly half the remaining distance between them. A mathematician, a physicist, and an engineer are asked, “When will the girls and boys meet?” Mathematician: “Never.” Physicist: “In an infinite amount of time.” Engineer: “Well… in about two minutes, they’ll be close enough for all practical purposes.”

Q: How do you embarrass an archeologist?A: Give him a used tampon and ask him which period it came from.

If Scientists Wrote Nursery Rhymes How many can you solve? (Answers below)1. A research team proceeded toward the apex of a natural geologicprotuberance, the purpose of their expedition being the procurement ofa sample of fluid hydride of oxygen in a large vessel, the exact sizeof which was unspecified. One member of the team precipitantly descended,sustaining severe fractural damage to the upper cranial portion of hisanatomical structure. Subsequently, the second member of the teamperformed a self-rotational translation oriented in the direction takenby the first member.2. Complications arose during an investigation of dietary influence: oneresearcher was unable to assimilate adipose tissue and another was unableto consume tissue consisting chiefly of muscle fiber. By reciprocalarrangement between the two researchers, total consumption of the viandsunder consideration was achieved, this leaving the original container ofthe viands devoid of contents.3. A young male human was situated near the intersection of two supportingstructural elements at right angles to each other: said subject was involvedin ingesting a saccharine composition prepared in conjunction with the ritualobservance of an annual fixed-day religious festival. Insertion into thesaccharine composition of the opposable digit of his forelimb was followedby removal of a drupe of genus prune. Subsequently the subject made adeclarative statement regarding the high quality of his character as ayoung male human.4. A triumvirate of murine rodents totally deviod of ophthalmic acuitywere observed in a state of rapid locomotion in pursuit of anagriculturalist’s marital adjunct. Said adjunct then performed triplecaudectomy utilizing an acutely honed bladed instrument generally usedfor the subdivision of edible tissue.5. A female of the species homo sapiens was the possesor of a smallimmature ruminant of the genus ovis, the outer most covering of whichreflected all wavelengths of visible light with a luminosity equal tothat mass of naturally occurring microscopically crystalline water.Regardless of the translational pathway chosen by the homo sapien, theprobability was 1 that the forementioned ruminent would select the samepathway.6. A human female, extremely captious and given to opposed behavior, wasquestioned as to the dynamic state of her cultivated tract of land usedfor production of various types of flora. The tract components wereenumerated as argentous tone-producing agents, a rare species of oceanincgrowth and pulchritudinous young females situated in a linear orientation.1. Jack and Jill went up the hill To fetch a pail of water. Jack fell down and broke his crown, And Jill came tumbling after.2. Jack Sprat could eat no fat. His wife could eat no lean. And so…….(I don’t remember the words) They ate the platter clean.3. Little Jack Horner Sat in the corner Eating his Christmas pie He stuck in his thumb And pulled out a plum And said “What a good boy am I!”4. Three blind mice, three blind mice See how they run, see how they run. They all ran after the farmer’s wife Who cut off their tails with a carving knife Did you ever see such a sight in your life As three blind mice.5. Mary had a Little Lamb Whose fleece was white as snow. And everywhere that Mary went, The lamb was sure to go.6. Mary, Mary, quite contrary, How does your garden grow. With silver bells, and cockle shells And pretty maidens, all in a row.

Letter from Daughter to Parents Dear Mother and Dad:It has now been three months since I left for college. I have been remissin writing this and I am very sorry for my thoughtlessness in not havingwritten before. I will bring you up to date now, but before you read on,please sit down. YOU ARE NOT TO READ ANY FURTHER UNLESS YOU ARE SITTING DOWN. OKAY!Well then, I am getting along pretty well now. The skull fracture and theconcussion I got when I jumped out of the window of my dormitory when itcaught fire shortly after my arrival are pretty well healed now. I only getthose sick headaches once a day.Fortunately the fire in the dormitory and my jump were witnessed by an attendantat the gas station near the dorm, and he was the one who called the firedepartment and the ambulance. He also visited me at the hospital and sinceI had nowhere to live, because of the burned out dormitory, he was kind enoughto invite me to share his apartment with him. It’s really a basement room,but it’s kind of cute. He is a very fine boy and we have fallen deeply inlove and are planning to be married. We haven’t set the exact date yet, butit will be before my pregnancy begins to show.Yes Mother and Dad, I am pregnant. I know how much you are looking forwardto being grrandparents and I know you will welcome the baby and give it thelove, devotion and tender care you gave me when I was a child. The reasonfor the delay in our marriage is that my boyfriend has some minor infectionwhich prevents us from passing our pre-marital blood tests and I carelesslycaught it from him. This will soon clear up with the penicillin injectionsI am taking daily.I know you will welcome him into our family with open arms. He is kind andalthough not well educated, he is ambitious. Although he is of a differentrace and religion than ours, I know your oft expressed tolerance will notpermit you to be bothered by the fact that his skin color is somewhat darkerthan ours. I am sure you will love him as I do. His family background isgood too, for I am told that his father is an important gun-bearer in thevillage in Africa from which he came.Now that I have brought you up to date, I want to tell you that there wasno dormitory fire, I did not have a concussion or a skull fracture. I wasnot in the hospital, I am not pregnant, I am not engaged. I do not havesyphillis and there is no man (of any color) in my life. However, I am gettinga ‘D’ in History and an ‘F’ in Science and I wanted you to see those marksin the proper perspective.Yours- Your Loving Daughter

O Humid Night
(Melody: “O Holy Night”)

O Humid Night
Anopheline mosquitoes
Are circling you in the hope of a meal.
She takes a bite, saliva from her mouthparts
Drool parasites which you can’t see or feel

Your brain can get sick,
You will have a coma
After the rage and the headaches have passed
You’re veggie soup, home to protozoa,
Mosquito lands, time to go home at last..

Fall on your knees,
Pale, burning with fever
Plasmodia
Are in your blood, were in your spleen
Malaria
There’s no real cure, just in your dreams…

ODE TO A CLONE
By John Scalzi

(This originally appeared in America Online’s “Howdy” area on March 6th.)

Oh clone, my clone, how can you bear it
To exist knowing you have only one parent?
No zygote you, when haploid cells met
You were produced with a full chromosome set.
And now I can see that you are confused
To discover your genes have arrived slightly used.
To answer your questions is the aim of this poem
You who are like me, my clone, oh my clone.

You were not produced from between sweaty sheets
In fact, you arose from cells scraped off of my cheek.
Your genes gently placed in an egg we provided
And then shocked with a current until they divided.
You sat there a while till it was time to fish
That thing that was you from that petri dish.
(And though it may seem churlish at this time to mention,
we suspect that the dish had post-partum depression).

Oh clone, my clone, don’t feel angst or feel grief
Because the genes that you have are not bought but are leased.
You have no mother, but that’s no impediment
Indeed, you’ve bypassed the whole Complex of Oedipus.
To your one parent you can always relate
To do otherwise is a form of self hate.
Who can tell us apart when we answer the phone?
No one at all, my clone, oh my clone.

Think of all the experiences we’ll have!
(That is, once they allow you to go from the lab).
I’ll take you to places that I’ve already been
So you can see them once more for the first time again.
Let’s go to work, where I think we will find
That we’ll get twice as much done in just half the time.
And should we play tennis, our opponents have troubles
As they must play singles, but we shall play doubles.

Oh clone, my clone, I see you are vexed
By ethical issues admittedly complex.
If you are my clone, are you wed to my wife?
And would having two husbands cause marital strife?
Suppose that we clone her? Then what would that be?
Bigamy, polygamy, or polyandry?
Oh, the guilt I would have would go to the bone
If I accidentally slept with your wife, oh my clone.

Perhaps it would be better if we lived all our days
Away from each other — and go separate ways.
I would stay here and live with my mate
And you would take yours to some other state
Perhaps to Alaska, with Northern Lights blue
To live off the land, in a hut or igloo.
And with a deep sense of pride all my friends would be shown
Many pictures of your house, a Nome clone dome home.

Oh clone, my clone, you impressive feat
The one person born with no help from gametes.
When you have troubles getting yourself to sleep
Do you think on your compatriot, Dolly the sheep?
It’s true that we both share our genetic information
But I know that your mind performs its own peregrinations.
In the end I am me, and you are just you alone
You are your own person, my clone, oh my clone.

REAL CHEMISTRY NAMES OF REAL PEOPLE
Gold J. of North Carolina
Silver J. of North Carolina
Argon C. of Guam
Florine J. of Tennessee
Clorine J. of Maryland
Benzena J. of South Carolina
Ethyl J. of Ohio
Ether J. of Tennessee
Methyl S. of Maine
Methane M. of Alabama

The geology poem
Ode to Olivine in Thin Section, a poem by Brenna Lorenz

In basalt a lurid green
Bespeaks the savage olivine;
Mantle’s child, born of fire,
Restless in the open air,
Little beads of anger bear
The torture of desire.

Silica upon its face
It suffers, helpless, in disgrace,
Its powers of reaction bound
By solid’s bond and cage,
In agony confined to rage
Unstable and unsound.

Its birefringent power plays
The sifted light to rare displays;
The haunting, primal colors tell
Of fire and fury’s flag unfurled,
Flag of fluid, nether world,
Beneath the fragile shell.

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

if you enjoy pain.

if you know vector calculus but you can’t remember how to do long division.

if you chuckle whenever anyone says “centrifugal force.”

if you’ve actually used every single function on your graphing calculator.

if when you look in a mirror, you see a physics major.

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

if you frequently whistle the theme song to “MacGyver.”

if you always do homework on Friday nights.

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

if you think in “math.”

if you’ve calculated that the World Series actually diverges.

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

if you have a pet named after a scientist.

if you laugh at jokes about mathematicians.

if the Humane society has you arrested because you actually performed the

if you can translate English into Binary.

if you can’t remember what’s behind the door in the science building which says “Exit.”

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

If you are completely addicted to caffeine.

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

if you consider ANY non-science course “easy.”

if 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.

if the “fun” center of your brain has deteriorated from lack of use.

if you’ll assume that a “horse” is a “sphere” in order to make the math easier.

if you understood more than five of these indicators.

if you make a hard copy of this list, and post it on your door.

The beguiling ideas about science quoted here were gleaned from essays, exams, and classroom discussions. Most were from 5th and 6th graders. They illustrate Mark Twain’s contention that the ‘most interesting information comes from children, for they tell all they know and then stop.

Q: What is one horsepower?

A: One horsepower is the amount of energy it takes to drag a horse 500 feet in one second.

You can listen to thunder after lightning and tell how close you came to getting hit. If you don’t hear it, you got hit, so never mind.

Talc is found on rocks and on babies.

The law of gravity says no fair jumping up without coming back down.

When they broke open molecules, they found they were only stuffed with atoms. But when they broke open atoms, they found them stuffed with explosions.

When people run around and around in circles we say they are crazy. When planets do it we say they are orbiting.

Rainbows are just to look at, not to really understand.

While the earth seems to be knowingly keeping its distance from the sun, it is really only centrificating. [this guy is going to do well in college! *haha* …Lj]

Someday we may discover how to make magnets that can point in any direction.

South America has cold summers and hot winters, but somehow they still manage.

Most books now say our sun is a star. But it still knows how to change back into a sun in the daytime.

Water freezes at 32 degrees and boils at 212 degrees. There are 180 degrees between freezing and boiling because there are 180 degrees between north and south.

A vibration is a motion that cannot make up its mind which way it wants to go.

There are 26 vitamins in all, but some of the letters are yet to be discovered. Finding them all means living forever.

There is a tremendous weight pushing down on the center of the Earth because of so much population stomping around up there these days.

Lime is a green-tasting rock.

Many dead animals in the past changed to fossils while others preferred to be oil.

Genetics explain why you look like your father and if you don’t why you should.

Vacuums are nothings. We only mention them to let them know we know they’re there.

Some oxygen molecules help fires burn while others help make water, so sometimes it’s brother against brother.

Some people can tell what time it is by looking at the sun. But I have never been able to make out the numbers.

We say the cause of perfume disappearing is evaporation. Evaporation gets blamed for a lot of things people forget to put the top on.

To most people solutions mean finding the answers. But to chemists solutions are things that are still all mixed up.

In looking at a drop of water under a microscope, we find there are twice as many H’s as O’s.

Clouds are high flying fogs.

I am not sure how clouds get formed. But the clouds know how to do it, and that is the important thing.

Clouds just keep circling the earth around and around. And around. There is not much else to do.

Water vapor gets together in a cloud. When it is big enough to be called a drop, it does.

Humidity is the experience of looking for air and finding water.

We keep track of the humidity in the air so we won’t drown when we breathe.

Rain is often known as soft water, oppositely known as hail.

Rain is saved up in cloud banks.

In some rocks you can find the fossil footprints of fishes.

Cyanide is so poisonous that one drop of it on a dogs tongue will kill the strongest man.

A blizzard is when it snows sideways.

A hurricane is a breeze of a bigly size.

A monsoon is a French gentleman.

Thunder is a rich source of loudness.

Isotherms and isobars are even more important than their names sound.

It is so hot in some places that the people there have to live in other places.

The wind is like the air, only pushier.