Title: Red Ball

General Information about Item:

• Joke
• English
• United States

Informant Data:

• Shawn Honaryar is a Dartmouth ’20. He is a physics major. Some of his coursework has included engineering courses in addition to his physics courses.

Contextual Data:

• Social Context
  • This joke would be said in the company of those who all belong to some STEM field. Not necessary that they all belong to the same field or that a certain STEM fields are excluded (i.e. even though  the jokes mocks engineers, engineers themselves would still enjoy hearing it). That being said it would probably be more common in groups consisting of mathematicians, physicists, and engineers over those in the other STEM fields. The age or language, assuming translation, would not be relevant.

• Cultural Context
  • The cultural group for which this makes sense encompasses all STEM fields. It requires understanding the differences in perspective between mathematics, engineering, and physics as opposed to understanding the fields themselves. Each field values and prioritizes things differently. Engineers often sacrifice a certain degree of accuracy for improved practicality provided the model is close enough for their purposes. Physicists would want to develop a model that fully reflects the behavior of a system or phenomenon, but would still use a conceptual understanding of physics to find inventive ways to prevent it from being needlessly complicated. A mathematician would be very direct when solving problems and generally view things from the perspective of the calculations rather than the real world phenomenon that they would model. In this case, the joke highlights how in the pursuit of practicality and efficiency, engineers often rely on tables for values and formulas for common scenarios and calculations. It is typical in the STEM fields to mock themselves and other fields by hyperbolizing their faults and strengths as this joke does.

Item:

A mathematician, a physicist, and an engineer are asked to find the volume of a ball. The mathematician says he will calculate the triple integral. The physicist says he will put the ball in water and see how much it displaces. The engineer says he only has tables for green balls.

Transcript:

• Robert: Could you please give your name and background?
• Shawn: Shawn Honaryar. I’m a physics major.
• Robert: Could you please tell your joke?
• Shawn: A mathematician, a physicist, and an engineer are asked to find the volume of a ball. The mathematician says he will calculate the triple integral. The physicist says he will put the ball in water and see how much it displaces. The engineer says he only has tables for green balls.

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

Collector’s Name: Robert Sylvia

Tags/Keywords:

• Joke. Interdisciplinary. Hyperbole. Engineering. Red Ball.