Physics Limericks
"Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese."
-G. K. Chesterton
There's a substantial amount of pain to be had from physics equations, but it pales in comparison to the agony of physics limericks. Proceed at your own risk!
The Condensed Story of Miss Farad
by A. P. French
Miss Farad was pretty and sensual
And charged to a reckless potential;
But a rascal named Ohm
Conducted her home--
Her decline was, alas, exponential.
See You at Work
by Steve Langer
The chairman of AT&T
Said, "Your graduate physics degree
Is not worth a - penny,
Of your kind we've too many.
Perhaps you can program in C?"
On Liquor Production
by David M. Smith
A friend who's in liquor production
Owns a still of astounding construction.
The alcohol boils
Through old magnet coils;
She says that it's "proof by induction."
Fun with Derivatives
a is dv by dt.
Is this useful? There's no guarantee.
If it leads to, "Oh, heck!"'s,
Take dv by dx,
And then write down its product with v.
Doin' Its Own Thing
by Edward H. Green
The first law of Newton I sing
My voice has a relevant ring:
"An object left free
Of hassles will be
Engrossed in just doing its thing."
May the Force Be With You
by David Morin, Eric Zaslow, E'beth Haley, John Golden, and Nathan Salwen
On a merry-go-round in the night,
Coriolis was shaken with fright.
Despite how he walked,
'Twas like he was stalked,
By some fiend always pushing him right.
A Brief History of Gravity
by Bruce Elliott
It filled Galileo with mirth
To watch his two rocks fall to Earth.
He gladly proclaimed,
"Their rates are the same,
And quite independent of girth!"
Then Newton announced in due course
His own law of gravity's force:
"It goes, I declare,
As the inverted square
Of the distance from object to source."
But remarkably, Einstein's equation
Succeeds to describe gravitation
As spacetime that's curved,
And it's this that will serve
As the planets' unique motivation.
Yet the end of the story's not written;
By a new way of thinking we're smitten.
We twist and we turn,
Attempting to learn
The Superstring Theory of Witten!
Limerico di Galileo
by Martin J. Murphy
While watching a cannonball's motion,
Galileo conceived of the notion
That natural laws,
Not a mystical Cause,
Ruled the physical world's locomotion.
Though its own view was mostly confused,
The Church was not greatly amused
With this flaunting of Deo
By old Galileo
And ordered it quickly defused.
So the Pope sent some priests who inquired
If it wouldn’t be best he retired?
“Undoubtedly you know
What we did for Bruno;
Do you also wish to be fired?”
He asked an old Cardinal’s opinion:
“Pray tell me, Your Grace, if you will then,
Does this mean what I think?
That henceforth I must shrink
From discussing my clever perception?”
Said Bellarmine, “No, it is not a ban;
If you want to keep teaching of course you can.
They merely have said
To take care where you tread
And smile when you say thing Copernican.”
Unbeknownst to our venerable dissident
The records said something quite different.
When the Pope saw the note
The inquisitors wrote
He lost what remained of his temperament.
The message the Vatican sent
Was blunt in its stated intent
“Recant all this heresy
Quick or we’ harass thee,
Now ‘til your life has been spent.”
In facing the dread inquisition,
Few men could defend their position;
So it shouldn’t surprise
When we are apprised
Of old Galileo’s decision.
“Explaining celestial motion
Needs more than just faith and devotion.
But to save my poor head
I’ll recant what I’ve said
(Though I’ll secretly keep to my notion)”.
So our friend the illustrious Florentine
Spent his last years in Vatican quarantine,
Locked up in his home
By the prelates of Rome
For being a cosmical libertine.
The Church caused a major imbroglio
By correcting Copernicus’ folio
Yet it couldn’t discern
The abuse it would earn
In forbidding the whole Dialogo?
By killing Sidereus Nuncius
For the news that their views were defunctus,
The renaissance ended
And darkness descended
Upon the Dominican dunces.
In spite of the Vatican's dissuasion
Galileo still rose to the occasion.
Though once deemed heretical,
He proved more prophetical
Than those of a clerical persuasion.
Cole's Lost Soul
by A. P. French
There was a young fellow named Cole
Who ventured too near a black hole.
His dv by dt
Was quite wondrous to see
But now all that's left is his soul.
Goodnight Irene
Author unknown, submitted by Ken Kiger
There once was a girl named Irene,
who lived on distilled kerosene.
But she started absorbin'
A new hydrocarbon,
And since then has never benzene!
Cool Cruel Test
by Kay R. Devicci
The thermo exam was quite near-o,
And he thought everything was quite clear-o;
"Why study this junk
I'm sure I won't flunk,"
But they gave him an Absolute Zero.
The Bose-Einstein Story (Condensed)
by Jonathan P. Dowling
A couple of young guys in Boulder,
Cooled their gas cloud down colder and colder.
Then with much exhortation,
They hit Bose Condensation,
And beat out their rivals (much older).
Relatively Good Advice
by Edward H. Green
Dear S': I note with distress
The length of your yardstick is less
And please wind your clock
To make it tick-tock
More briskly. Your faithful friend, S.
Proton Decay
by David Halliday
A proton once said, "I'll fulfill
My long-term belief in free will.
Though theorists (may) say
That I ought to decay
I'm damned if I think that I will."
And Then There Were Photons
by William Rolnick
An electron, while trav'ling in space,
Met a positron there "face-to-face."
The electron then sighed,
At the sight of his bride
And they "died" in a loving embrace.
Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen
by David Halliday
Two photons, close-coupled at start,
Flew several parsecs apart.
Said one, in distress,
"What you're forced to express
Removes any choice on my part."
The Cat in the Tree
by Peter Price
Another great Dane has made free
With a question of Be or Not be.
Now might Schrödinger's puss,
In descending by Schuss,
Leave one track on each side of a tree?
Protecting Schrödinger's Cat
by Devlin Gualtieri
PETA was out in full force,
But not for a dog or a horse.
At Schrödinger's place
They pleaded their case
For the sake of his cat, of course.
On What's New and True
A certain Phys Rev referee
Considers all papers with glee:
"What's new is not true,
And what's true is not new,
Unless it was written by me."
Always Check Your Units!
by David Morin
Your units are wrong! cried the teacher.
Your church weighs six joules --- what a feature!
And the people inside
Are four hours wide,
And eight gauss away from the preacher!
Who Needs Math Skills?
The skill to do math on a page
Has declined to the point of outrage.
Equations quadratica
Are solved on Math'matica,
And on birthdays we don't know our age.
Jack & Jill
In Boston, lived Jack, as did Jill,
Who gained mgh on a hill.
In their liquid pursuit,
Jill exclaimed with a hoot,
"I think we've just climbed a landfill!"
While noting, "Oh, this is just grand,"
Jack tripped on some trash in the sand.
He changed his potential
To kinetic, torrential,
But not before grabbing Jill's hand.
Running Around in (Elongated) Circles
Newton said as he gazed off afar,
"From here to the most distant star,
These wond'rous ellipses
And solar eclipses
All come from a 1 over r."
Potentially Useful
When using potentials, effective,
Remember the one main objective:
The goal is to shun
All dimensions but one,
And then view things with 1-D perspective.
Either Ether Or...
The findings of Michelson-Morley
Allow us to say very surely,
"If this ether is real,
Then it has no appeal,
And shows itself off rather poorly."
Time Dilation
The effects of dilation of time
Are magical, strange, and sublime.
In your frame, this verse,
Which you'll see is not terse,
Can be read in the same amount of time it takes someone else in another frame to read a similar sort of rhyme.
Home |
Personal |
Fun Physics |
Marvelous Math |
Other Stuff
|
