Is All Science Humour Punny?

By Dave Semeniuk On December 10, 2007 · 5 Comments · In >archive, >commentary, >creative, >humour

I wrote this on my lab’s blackboard about a month ago:

Lab Blackboard1

I was curious about what sort of jokes the my lab mates and users would come up with. A variety have been written and erased – some funny, but most punny. It got me thinking about science humour. From my grade school days, I remember how almost every exposure I had to science humour was one pun after another. Some of you might remember…

Q: What do you call a laboratory in which they use rats as test-animals?
A: A Lab-rat-ory

Q: What did the male stamen say to the female pistil?
A: I like your “style”

Don’t leave it to biologists – physicists and chemists have their own gold:

Oxidants happen.

Q: What sound does a sick duck make?
A: Quark!

I’d love to see other puns from all of you. I’ll start it off with a water-related pun I wringed out of my brain…

5 Responses to Is All Science Humour Punny?

Dave Semeniuk says:

December 10, 2007 at 9:08 pm

Alright, here goes:

Do oceanographers smoke when drinking? No, they prefer oxygin.
J.J.S. Boyce says:

December 11, 2007 at 4:54 pm

Remember, if you’re not part of the solution you’re part of the precipitate.

Until we get back our quantum mechanics grades, we’ve both passed and failed.

It’s all relative.
Terry » Archive » Merry Talk Like A Physicist Day! says:

March 14, 2008 at 9:13 am

[...] and “boson” in every one of conversations today. Luckily, keeping with science humor puns and my oceanography background, “boson” sounds like “bosun”, the hard-assed [...]
Terry » Archive » Pondering Scientific Humor, Again. says:

April 28, 2008 at 11:25 am

[...] know scientists are a quirky group – they love topical T-shirts, have an affinity for puns, and, as I discovered this morning, scientists love infusing scientific humor into everyday [...]
Terry » Archive » More on Science Humour - Puns are awesome and unavoidable. says:

August 26, 2008 at 11:59 pm

[...] reminded me of some previous musing of mine on scientific humour – is it all pun ridden? Yes, it [...]