Title: ENGS 21 Class

General Information about Item:

• Genre and Sub Genre: Customary Folklore: Rite of Passage

• Language: English

• Country where Item is from: United States

Informant Data:

• David Domonoske is a sophomore at Dartmouth College. He is a member of the alpine ski team, and hails from Park City, Utah. He plans on majoring in engineering (which he knew he wanted to do even before arriving at Dartmouth), and staying for an additional year to pursue the bachelor of engineering degree. He is a member of the Chi Heorot Fraternity. As a sophomore he hasn’t taken many engineering classes yet, as he has been working on fulfilling the numerous prerequisites. I interviewed Dave in Thayer on 11/3/17. We spoke informally for a while, and then I videoed a portion of the discussion for documentation purposes.

Contextual Data:

• Social/Cultural Context: ENGS 21 is a class taken primarily by students who are just starting the engineering major at Dartmouth.  The class is a design-based class, where students are placed into group of 4-6 students, and are tasked with identifying a problem on campus, and creating a product that solves the problem.  The group works together throughout the term, and learns a lot about the resource and mentors that are available through Thayer. The class culminates with a big presentation at the end of the term, where each group shares the results of their project.  Most people who have taken the class describe it as a very unique experience, which isn’t really offered anywhere outside of Thayer.

Item:

• The item is a description of an engineering class at Dartmouth, that constitutes a form of customary folklore (more specifically a rite of passage), as it is a required shared experience that brings the engineering community closer together, and marks a transition for students into the engineering major. According to Arnold van Gennep, a rite of passage can be separated into three groups: pre-liminal, liminal, and post-liminal. For ENGS 21, the pre-liminal stage would be the period of time before one enrolls in the class, as you haven’t begun the true transition into the engineering community yet. The liminal, or transitional stage would be the period of time while you are taking the class, as you are slowly integrating into the community, and are thus in between being fully removed and full integrated into the community. Finally, the post-liminal stage is when you are finished with the class, as this marks the end of the transition into the Thayer community. The students now have this meaningful shared experience with the older Thayer students, and it brings everyone closer together.

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

• ENGS 21 Interview_1

Transcript of Associated File:

• Dave: I’m David, I’m a ’20, and I’m in ENSG 21 right now. It’s a class where everybody is I groups at the beginning, and you go out into the world and identify a problem. And then your group brainstorms different solutions to this problem. And you pick your best one, and you go through the design process, trying to figure out what different ways you could fix this, and then you start building prototypes, and then by the end of the class, hopefully you have a solid product that is usable, and will help people in the real world.Alexander: Okay, so how do you think participating in this class has affected the way you see yourself as part of the Dartmouth engineering community?Dave: It’s definitely the first time I’ve been involved in Thayer. Before this I’ve just done pre reqs. This is the first time where I’m down in the machine shop, I’m down in Couch lab building stuff, I’m working with a lot of professors. It’s also like every time I’m down there people ask how its going. They’ve been in ENGS 21 before, they know what the process is like, and kind of learning what it’s like to build something in Thayer. It’s basically a rite of passage into Thayer.

Informant’s Comments:

• Dave said that he thinks the best part of the class has been the support and mentorshipthat he has started to see from other Dartmouth engineering students, who seem to be more willing to go out of their way to give advice or check in now that he is taking ENGS 21.

Collector’s Comments:

• In initially hearing Dave’s comments about ENGS 21, I thought that this must be a form of customary folklore, as it’s a shared experience specific to Dartmouth engineers, and it is the most notable class that engineers share. I am an engineer myself, and anytime I talk to another engineer that has graduated, they always ask me what I did for my ENGS 21 project, as it’s that unique of an experience. To confirm this, I went back to the Wilson reading titled, Documenting Folklore, and he says, “Customary practices range broadly across the full spectrum of human activity, but they tend to focus on ceremonies and festive events which tie people more closely to their family, ethnic, religious, occupational, and regional groups; on rites of passage which move people through transitional stages of life such as birth, puberty, marriage, incorporation into new social groups, and death.” I believe that ENGS 21 must fall into this category, as it’s a human activity that ties engineering more closely to the larger Dartmouth engineering community, and it also serves as a rite of passage into the Dartmouth engineering major, where you transition from the peripheries of the pre reqs to the core engineering classes, where fellow engineers start to accept you into the tight knit community in Thayer.  In hearing about Dave’s experience, it seems as though Thayer has done a great job designing this class, as Dave felt it introduced him to the resources at Thayer, and also the general community.

Collector’s Name: Alexander Sullivan

Tags/Keywords:

• customary folklore, rite of passage, tradition

Title: Electron Pun

General Information about Item:

• Genre and Sub Genre: Verbal Folklore: Joke/Pun

• Language: English

• Country where Item is from: United States

Informant Data:

• David Domonoske is a sophomore at Dartmouth College. He is a member of the alpine ski team, and hails from Park City, Utah. He plans on majoring in engineering, and staying for an additional year to pursue the bachelor of engineering degree. As a sophomore he hasn’t taken many engineering classes yet, as he has had to fulfill the numerous prerequisites. I interviewed Dave at Thayer on 11/3/17.

Contextual Data:

• Social/Cultural Context: According to the informant, this joke would normally only be told between engineers, or someone with a background in the sciences, as some knowledge of the changing charge of atoms is required to understand the joke/pun and actually find it funny. Specifically, one would have to know that when an atom loses a negatively charged electron, the atom’s charge would change from neutral to positive. The informant said the joke is generally told between friends as a form of entertainment, which is the setting he first heard it in.  He says he has since passed it along to a couple of people in his engineering classes.

Item:

• The item is a joke that the informant says is shared amongst engineering students at Dartmouth. The joke is a play on words, or pun, in which the word positive is used in a way where it could mean two things at once. It could either mean that the atom is positively charged, or that the atom is certain he lost an electron. This double meaning is the foundation for the joke’s humor.
• Two atoms are walking down the street, and one says,“Wait, wait, stop. I’ve lost an electron somewhere.The second one says, “Wait, are you sure?”To which the first one says, “Yes. I’m positive.”

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

• Electron Joke

Transcript of Associated File:

• Two atoms are walking down the street, and one says,

“Wait, wait, stop. I’ve lost an electron somewhere.”

The second one says, “Wait, are you sure?”

To which the first one says, “Yes. I’m positive.

Informant’s Comments:

• Dave said that he thinks the joke is kind of nerdy and lame, but that’s really where the joke derives its humor. People normally laugh at the simplicity of the joke instead of the cleverness of the pun itself.

Collector’s Comments:

• This joke seems to be a stereotypical lame science joke, where the actual content of the joke is so nerdy, that people laugh at it. But, it seems as though the joke is necessarily contained within a certain group of people, as its humor requires certain scientific knowledge. It appears important that this joke is transmitted in English, or another language that has a word with the same double meaning, as the joke relies upon the dual meaning of the word positive, as it can either mean that you are sure of something, or it can refer to a number greater than zero. I assume that this isn’t necessarily the case with other languages, which would cause the joke to lose its meaning upon translation.

Collector’s Name: Alexander Sullivan

Tags/Keywords:

• Verbal Folklore, Joke, Pun

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):

• Feras Abdulla joke

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