The “Big Bang Theory” has introduced the population at large to the slightly skewed world of geeks. Thanks to this one show it’s cool to laugh at the foibles of Engineer-Americans and their slightly skewed, almost-human view of the world. We here at the Humorousness desk are never ashamed to hop on a hot trend, so this month we bring you some of the best Engineer jokes we could find (courtesy of quora.com). And let us tell you right off the bat… some of these are so authentic, they’re barely even funny!
- An engineer was crossing a road one day when a frog called out to him and said, “If you kiss me, I’ll turn into a beautiful princess.” He bent over, picked up the frog and put it in his pocket. The frog spoke up again and said, “If you kiss me and turn me back into a beautiful princess, I will stay with you for one week.” The engineer took the frog out of his pocket, smiled at it and returned it to the pocket.
The frog then cried out, “If you kiss me and turn me back into a princess, I’ll stay with you and do ANYTHING you want.” Again the engineer took the frog out, smiled at it and put it back into his pocket.
Finally, the frog asked, “What is the matter? I’ve told you I’m a beautiful princess, that I’ll stay with you for a week and do anything you want. Why won’t you kiss me?”
The engineer said, “Look I’m an engineer. I don’t have time for a girlfriend, but a talking frog… that’s cool.” - What is the difference between Mechanical Engineers and Civil Engineers?
Mechanical Engineers build weapons; Civil Engineers build targets. - Normal people don’t understand this concept; they believe that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Engineers believe that if it ain’t broke, it doesn’t have enough features yet. – The Dilbert Principle (1996)
- An engineer dies and goes to hell. After a while, the engineer gets dissatisfied with the level of comfort there and starts designing and building improvements. After a while, hell has air conditioning, flushing toilets, water fountains and escalators – making the engineer a pretty popular guy.
One day God phones Satan up and asks with a sneer: “Hey buddy, how’s it goin’ down there?”
Satan snickered back, “Things are going great actually. We’ve got air conditioning, flush toilets, escalators and the works. Hell, there’s no telling what this engineer guy is gonna come up with next.”
God replies, “What? You’ve got an engineer? That’s a mistake – he should never have been sent there; send him back up.”
To which Satan replied, “No way dude. I like having an engineer on staff, I’m keeping him.”
God retorted, “Send him up here or I’ll sue.”
Satan laughs loudly and answers, “Yeah, right. And just where are you gonna find a lawyer?”
- An engineering student asked his friend, “Where did you get such a great bike?”
The second engineer replied, “Well, I was walking along yesterday minding my own business when a beautiful woman rode up on this bike. She threw the bike to the ground, took off all her clothes and said, “Take what you want.”
The second engineer nodded approvingly, “Good choice; the clothes probably wouldn’t have fit.”
- Some people say the glass is half full.
Some people say the glass is half empty.
Engineers say the glass is twice as big as necessary.
- A priest, an ophthalmologist, and an engineer were golfing behind a slow group of golfers.
The engineer fumed, “What’s with those guys? We must have been waiting for fifteen minutes!”
The doctor chimed in, “I don’t know, but I’ve never seen such inept golf!”
The priest saw the greens keeper coming and asked “What’s wrong with that group ahead of us? They’re rather slow, aren’t they?”
The greens keeper replied, “Oh, yes. That’s a group of blind firemen. They lost their sight saving our clubhouse from a fire last year, so we let them play for free anytime.”
The group fell silent for a moment. Then the priest said, “That’s so sad. I’ll say a special prayer for them.”
The ophthalmologist added, “Maybe I could examine them to see if there’s anything I can do for them.”
They were silent for a moment until the engineer said, “Why can’t they play at night?”
- Q. How many software engineers does it take to change a light bulb?
A. None. That’s a hardware issue.
- There was a guy who wanted to know how to calculate the volume of a red rubber ball. He first took it to a mathematician, who measured its radius and used the formula V=4/3*pi*r^3 to find its volume.
Next, he went to a physicist, who immersed the ball in a bowl full of water. He then measured the amount of water which overflowed and calculated the volume of the ball. Still not satisfied, our man takes the ball to a mechanical engineer. The engineer says, “Wait a moment, I got this.” He gets up and skims through the books laid out on his shelf. “Ah, this should do it.”, he says and pulls out a big fat hard bound book titled – “The Mechanical Engineer’s Handbook to Red Rubber Balls”
- Two engineering students happen to be very close friends. One day, while sitting in a restaurant and having coffee, one friend asked the other: “how is your relationship with that new girlfriend going?”
Student: I forgot to mention, yesterday she came to my house.
Friend: WOW!!! What happened then? Tell me the full story.
Student: Well, I played her favorite music and we danced.
Friend: Then what happened??
Student: As we were dancing together, we kissed…
Friend: Then what? Keep going!
Student: I picked her up in my arms and sat her on the table next to my new laptop…
Friend: You got a New Laptop? When???
Student: Just last week. My parents gifted me one…
Friend: AWESOME DUDE!!!
- How do you know if an engineer is an introvert or an extrovert?
The introvert looks at his shoes when he talks to you; the extrovert looks at your shoes.
- Engineers know nothing, but only engineers know this!
- Several scientists were all posed the following question: “What is 2 * 2 ?”
The Engineer whips out his slide rule (so it’s old) and shuffles it back and forth, and announces “3.99”.
The Physicist consults his technical references, sets up the problem on his computer, and announces “it lies between 3.98 and 4.02”.
The Mathematician cogitates for a while, then announces: “I don’t know what the answer is, but I can tell you, an answer exists!”.
The Philosopher smiles: “But what do you mean by 2 * 2 ?”
The Logician replies: “Please define 2 * 2 more precisely.”
The Sociologist: “I don’t know, but it was nice talking about it”.
The Behavioral Ecologist: “A polygamous mating system”.
Medical Student : “4”
All the others looking astonished, and asked “How did you know?”
The Medical Student said “I memorized it.”
- Question: What did the engineer say to the doctor when the doctor asked him what he did?
Answer: “I turn food and drink into solid and liquid waste.”
- It should be noted that no ethically-trained software engineer would ever consent to write a DestroyBaghdad procedure. Basic professional ethics would instead require him to write a DestroyCity procedure, to which Baghdad could be given as a parameter.
- So an IEEE engineer walks into a bar and orders 1.0000000000100000082740370999090373516082763671875 root beers.
The bartender says, “I’ll have to charge extra; that’s a root beer float”. And the engineer says, “In that case, make it a double”.
- Three engineering students were gathered together discussing the possible designers of the human body. One said, “It was a mechanical engineer. Just look at all the joints.”
Another said, “No, it was an electrical engineer. The nervous system has many thousands of electrical connections.”
The last said, “Actually it was a civil engineer. Who else would run a toxic waste pipeline through a recreational area?”
- There was an engineer, manager and programmer driving down a steep mountain road. The brakes failed and the car careened down the road out of control. Half way down the driver managed to stop the car by running it against the embankment narrowing avoiding going over a cliff. They all got out, shaken by their narrow escape from death, but otherwise unharmed.
The manager said “To fix this problem we need to organize a committee, have meetings, and through a process of continuous improvement, develop a solution.”
The engineer said “No that would take too long, and besides that method never worked before. I have my trusty pen knife here and will take apart the brake system, isolate the problem and correct it.”
The programmer said “We should push the car back up the hill and see if we can reproduce the problem.”
- An engineer, a biologist and a mathematician are watching an empty house. Two people go into the house.
Three people leave the house.
Engineer: “Looks like we were given bad data to start with.”
Biologist: ‘Wow, they must have reproduced!”
Mathematician: “There are now -1 people in the house.” - An engineer in Revolution-era Paris is convicted of being a royalist. He’s sentenced to die and is brought to the guillotine. They lock him in, and the order is given… but nothing happens. The executioners fiddle around with it for a while, but can’t seem to get it working, so they delay the execution for a day.
The next day, after having worked on it all night, they lead the engineer up, lock him in, and give the order… but nothing happens. Same mad scramble as yesterday, this time with more urgency. But they still can’t get it to work, so the poor engineer gets one more reprieve.
Finally, on the third day, having brought in the top executioner in the city to make sure the guillotine works, they lead the engineer up, lock him in, and give the order… but nothing happens.
Meanwhile, the engineer cranes his head around, looks up at the mechanism, and says “You know guys, I think I see your problem here…”
- An MBA and an Engineer go on a camping trip, set up their tent, and fall asleep. Some hours later, the Engineer wakes his MBA friend. “Look up at the sky and tell me what you see.
The MBA replies, “I see millions of stars.”
The Engineer asks “What does that tell you?”
The MBA ponders for a minute. “Astronomically speaking, it tells me that there are millions of galaxies and potentially billions of planets. Astrologically, it tells me that Saturn is in Leo. Time wise, it appears to be approximately a quarter past three. Theologically, it’s evident the Lord is all-powerful and we are small and insignificant. Meteorologically, it seems we will have a beautiful day tomorrow. What does it tell you?”
The Engineer friend is silent for a moment, and then speaks. “Practically… Someone has stolen our tent”.
- There was an engineer who had an exceptional gift for fixing all things mechanical. After serving his company loyally for over 30 years, he happily retired. Several years later the company contacted him regarding a seemingly impossible problem they were having with one of their multi-million dollar machines. They had tried everything and everyone else to get the machine to work but to no avail.
In desperation, they called on the retired engineer who had solved so many of their problems in the past. The engineer reluctantly took the challenge. He spent a day studying the huge machine. Finally, at the end of the day, he marked a small “x” in chalk on a particular component of the machine and said, “This is where your problem is.” The part was replaced and the machine worked perfectly again, but the company balked when they received a bill for $50,000 from the engineer for his service. They demanded an itemized accounting of his charges.
The engineer responded briefly: One chalk mark $1; Knowing where to put it $49,999.
He was paid in full and retired again in peace.
- What is a polar bear?
It’s a rectangular bear, after a change of coordinates
- An elephant and a mouse go to a movie, but only have enough for one ticket. So the mouse hides in the elephant’s shirt pocket. They go in, and in the middle of the movie an usher shows up asking to see their tickets. The elephant shows his, and the usher asks “what about this one?” The elephant pounds his shirt pocket and says “oh that… that’s a picture of a friend of mine”
- How many sound engineers does it take to change a light bulb? None. Sound men don’t do lights.
- An architect encounters a group of engineers clustered around a small flagpole, busily tapping at their clipboards and calculators. The architect watches for a few minutes then asks what they’re doing. The engineers impatiently reply that they’re calculating the exact height of the pole since their tape measure wouldn’t reach the top without flopping. So the architect examines the pole, lifts it from its base and sets it on the ground. Asking to borrow their tape measure he stretches it across the pole and reads exactly 15 feet. After he walks away the engineers stand the pole back up again and return to their clipboards and calculators, annoyed and gloating about how they needed the height of the pole, but the dumb architect only gave them the length.
- A woman in a hot air balloon realized she was lost. She reduced altitude and spotted a man below. She descended a bit more and shouted, “Excuse me, can you help me? I promised a friend I would meet him an hour ago but I don’t know where I am.”
The man below replied “You’re in a hot air balloon hovering 30 feet above the ground. You’re between 40 and 41 degrees north latitude and between 59 and 60 degrees west longitude.”
“You must be an engineer,” said the balloonist. “I am”, replied the man. “How did you know?”
“Well, answered the balloonist, “everything you told me is technically correct, but I’ve no idea what to make of your information, and the fact is I’m still lost. Frankly, you’ve not been much help at all. If anything, you’ve delayed my trip even more.”
The man below responded, “You must be in management.”
“I am,” replied the balloonist, “but how did you know?”
“Well,” said the man, “You don’t know where you are or where you’re going. You have risen to where you are due to a large quantity of hot air. You made a promise which you’ve no idea how to keep, and it’s the fault of the people beneath you when you can’t solve your own problems!”
- If advice columns were written by engineers…
“Last week my husband was off duty and I had to drive alone to work. I left my husband with the maid and my baby at home. I drove for just about 2km from home & my car engine started 2 overheat so I had to turn back and get another car. When I got home I found my husband in bed with our maid. I don’t know what to do now. Please help!!!”
Helpful Engineering answer…
“Overheating of engine after such short distance can be caused by problems associated with the fuel injectors. You need to check your oil and water level in your engine before you start your journey. You must also make sure your car is serviced regularly to avoid problems in future. Hope this helped you.” - There are 10 types of people: Those who understand binary numbers, and those who don’t.
