Coefficient of Friction Knock-Knock Joke

Title: Coefficient of Friction Knock-Knock Joke

General Information about Item:

  • Genre and Sub Genre: Verbal Folklore: Joke (Knock-Knock Joke)
  • Language: English
  • Country where Item is from: United States

Informant Data:

  • Feras Abdulla is a senior at Dartmouth College in Hanover, NH. He is a double major in engineering and mathematics, and is trying to finish his Bachelor of Engineering degree in four years. He is from Manama, Bahrain. He can almost always be found in Thayer, and he enjoys working on projects for his various engineering classes. I interviewed Feras in one of the Thayer classrooms on 11/5/17.

Contextual Data:

  • Social/Cultural Context: This is normally a joke that is told between fellow engineering students or faculty, as you must have background information that is held by almost all engineers, in order to actually understand the joke. Specifically, you would have to know that the greek letter mu (μ) is used in physics and engineering to represent the coefficient of friction. The informant heard this joke from a friend who is also an engineering major, and it was told to try to provide entertainment and elicit a laugh from the informant. The informant says he has passed this joke along to other friends in the same manner.

Item:

  • The joke is of the classic “knock-knock” form. The joke necessarily involves two people: the one telling the joke, and the one receiving the joke; the joke consists of a quasi-conversation, so it’s not a joke that can be told by only one person.  The joke foreshadows what is to come by saying interrupting coefficient of friction before later interrupting the person listening to the joke. But, what makes the joke funny is that when the person is interrupted, the phrase they use to interrupt the person isn’t an arbitrary phrase, and is instead the Greek letter that is used to represent the coefficient of friction. It’s also important to note that the delivery of the joke is important to its effectiveness. When the person butts in to interrupt, it should be as abrupt as possible to emphasize the interruption.
  • “Knock knock. Who’s there? Interrupting coefficient of friction. Interrupting coefficient of fri…. mmmuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu”

Associated file (a video, audio, or image file):

Transcript of Associated File:

Feras: Hello, my name is Feras Abdulla, and this is a joke that I heard once around Thayer. Knock knock

Alexander: Who’s there?

Feras: Interrupting coefficient of friction.

Alexander: Interrupting coefficient of fri-

Feras: mmmuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu (μ)

Informant’s Comments:

  • The informant said that the joke is pretty nerdy and lame, but that is often what people find funny about it. It’s almost so bad that people laugh at it. He also emphasized that the potential group of people that he would tell it to are people with engineering type backgrounds because most others wouldn’t fully understand the joke.

Collector’s Comments:

  • Being an engineering major myself, I understood the joke, and agree that the humor is largely derived form the lame nature of the joke. I also agree that this joke should only be told amongst people with engineering or physics knowledge, as someone without knowledge of the coefficient of friction and the way it is represented in equations likely wouldn’t be able to appreciate the humor.

Collector’s Name: Alexander Sullivan

Tags/Keywords:

  • Verbal folklore, joke, knock-knock joke

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