At the Party with the Physicists
One day, all of the world's famous physicists decided to get together for a party (ok, there were some non-physicists too who crashed the party). Fortunately, the doorman was a grad student, and able to observe some of the guests...
- Everyone gravitated toward Newton, but he just kept moving around at a constant velocity and showed no reaction.
- Einstein thought it was a relatively good time.
- Coulomb got a real charge out of the whole thing.
- Cauchy, being the mathematician, still managed to integrate well with everyone.
- Thompson enjoyed the plum pudding.
- Pauli came late, but was mostly excluded from things, so he split.
- Pascal was under too much pressure to enjoy himself.
- Ohm spent most of the time resisting Ampere's opinions on current events.
- Hamilton went to the buffet tables exactly once.
- Volta thought the social had a lot of potential.
- Hilbert was pretty spaced out for most of it.
- Heisenberg may or may not have been there.
- Feynman got from the door to the buffet table by taking every possible path
- The Curies were there and just glowed the whole time.
- van der Waals forced himeself to mingle.
- Wien radiated a colourful personality.
- Millikan dropped his Italian oil dressing.
- de Broglie mostly just stood in the corner and waved.
- Hollerith liked the hole idea.
- Stefan and Boltzman got into some hot debates.
- Everyone was attracted to Tesla's magnetic personality.
- Compton was a little scatter-brained at times.
- Bohr ate too much and got atomic ache.
- Watt turned out to be a powerful speaker.
- Hertz went back to the buffet table several times a minute.
- Faraday had quite a capacity for food.
- Oppenheimer got bombed.
- The microwave started radiating in the background when Penzias and Wilson showed up.
- After one bite Chandrasekhar reached his limit.
- Gamow left the party early with a big bang while Hoyle stayed late in a steady state.
- For Schrodinger this was more a wave function rather than a social function.
- Skorucak wanted to put everybody on his web site.
- Erdos was sad no epsilons were invited.
- Born thought the probability of enjoying himself was pretty high.
- Instead of coming through the front door Josephson tunnelled through.
- Groucho refused to attend any party that would invite him in the first place.
- Niccolò Tartaglia kept stammering throughout the evening.
- Pauling wanted to bond with everyone.
- Keynes was keen to question the marginal utility of this party.
- Shakespeare could not decide whether to be or not to be at the party.
- John Forbes Nash wanted to play a n-person zero sum game.
- Pavlov brought his dog; which promptly chased after Schrodinger's cat.
- Zeno of Elea came with two friends - Achilles and the tortoise.
- Bill Gates came to install windows.
- Bertrand Russell kept wondering if the cook only cooks for the guests, who cooks for the cook?
- Witten bought a present all tied up with superstrings.
- The food was beautifully laid out by Mendeleyev on the periodic table.
- Riemann hypothesised about who would arrive next; to which Newton retorted, ' hypotheses non fingo.'
- Chadwick was handing out neutrons free of charge.
- Everyone was amazed at Bell's inequality.
- Watson and Crick danced the Double Helix.
- While Fermat sang, 'Save the Last Theorem for me.'
- Maxwell's demon argued with Dawkin's friend, the selfish Gene.
- Russell and Whitehead insisted on checking the bill for completeness and consistency. Godel said it was incomplete and it can never be proved otherwise.
- Epimenides the Cretan announced that only non-Cretans spoke the truth.
- Rontgen saw through everybody.
- Descartes cogitated, 'I think I am drunk. Therefore I am at the party.'
