Okay, here’s one I just made up:

Q: How many mathematicians does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: n mathematicians

And here’s one that I found that really shouldn’t have made me laugh out loud, but did:

A woman walks into a bar accompanied by a dog and a cow.  The bartender
says, “Hey, no animals are allowed in here.”
The woman replies, “These are very special animals.”
“How so?”
“They’re knot theorists.”
The bartender raises his eyebrows and says, “I’ve met a number of
knot theorists who I thought were animals, but never an animal that
was a knot theorist.”
“Well, I’ll prove it to you.  Ask them them anything you like.”
So the bartender asks the dog, “Name a knot invariant.”
“Arf, arf” barks the dog.
The bartender scowls and turns to the cow asking, “Name a topological
invariant.”
The cow says, “Mu, mu.”
At this point the bartender turns to the woman, says, “Just what are
you trying to pull” and throws them out of the bar.

Outside, the dog turns to the woman and asks, “Do you think I should
have said the Jones polynomial?”

Not a joke per se, but Daniel Dennett was giving a lecture at the NY Academy of Sciences (Science and the City Podcast), and in reference to why a particular paper was brilliant but difficult to follow due to its complex mathematics, he said:
“Mathematics is a little like sex. It’s very important, but you shouldn’t do it in public.”

mckenzievmd - 10 July 2007 01:31 PM

“Mathematics is a little like sex. It’s very important, but you shouldn’t do it in public.”

The following is also not a joke, but it had made me smile:

“Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. That’s relativity.” (A. Einstein)

Barto - 03 July 2007 07:49 PM

Well.. I feel ashamed about this, but I like this kind of jokes.

Teacher: Please give an example of doppler efect, using light instead of sound
Student: Well, when a car is coming, its lights are white/violet. When it go away, its lights are red.

Sorry for that , but I like it.

I felt that joke was worth repeating so I told it to three groups of guys I have lunch with on different days.  The first have no scientific background so didn’t laugh because they didn’t understand it.  The second, a physical chemist and a metallurgist, cracked up, the third, a physicist, looked at me blankly.  I tried to explain but he said, “I know what the Doppler effect is, but they were different lights so it doesn’t apply.”

With technical jokes, knowledge isn’t enough; the person has to have at least a tiny bit of a sense of humor. 

Occam

NecAsperaTerrent,

Did you come up with this by yourself?

“There are 10 types of people in the world. Those who understand binary numbers and those who do not.”

I love it!

George - 15 August 2007 04:20 PM

NecAsperaTerrent,

Did you come up with this by yourself?

“There are 10 types of people in the world. Those who understand binary numbers and those who do not.”

I love it!

I’d love to be able to claim responsibility for it, but I just saw it on an office wall and stored it to memory.

Maths and science jokes I can’t do, but hospital jokes I can…

...

What’s the difference between God and a surgeon?

God doesn’t think he’s a surgeon.

...

What’s the difference between an orthopaedic surgeon and a carpenter?

A carpenter cleans up after himself.

...

Barto, I didn’t laugh until Occam explained the joke… but then again the only thing I know about cars is that they weigh 1 ton, and they drive from point A to point B.

Now, if the joke were about a 7 train coming and a 1 train going away…

Alon - 16 August 2007 05:00 AM

Barto, I didn’t laugh until Occam explained the joke… but then again the only thing I know about cars is that they weigh 1 ton, and they drive from point A to point B.

Now, if the joke were about a 7 train coming and a 1 train going away…

Well, here the typical male topics are guns, football (soccer for the americans), cars and women. I can only participate on such conversations when they are about the latter where no much knowledge outside the standard biological is needed. Taking into account Occam statement about that knowledge is needed, I know that cars have red lights on the rear and white on the front… and no much more.

Two amateur astronomers went to a high mountain to observe the stars.

When night arrived the sky was cloudy so they decided to prepare their tent to go to sleep and try it again in next night.

It was 2:00am when one of them openned his eyes and woke up the other, “look up, tell me what do you see”.

The other one lying in the floor looked up and the sky was wonderfully clear and images of the stars were fantastic.

“Well”, the other said, “I can distinguish very clearly with my naked eyes the Aldebaran, the Betelgeuse, the Cappella…”

“No!” said the first one, “look again and tell me what do you see”.

“Hmmm”. said the other, “now that you tell me, I can even distinguish very clearly the Hyades, the Pleiades, the…”

“No!’, said again the first one, “don’t you see that somebody has stole our tent”?!

:tongue: Are these jokes suppose to be punny or are you just poking pun at science?

The patient came back to the doctor’s office minutes after his evaluation.

“Doctor”, say the patient, “I’m a little confused, you told me Capricornio, right?

“No”, the doctor says, “Cancer!...cancer!