Big machines in factories kind of engineer.
An engineer was taken to the Guillotine to be beheaded. He knelt and placed his neck in the proper place. The trip was sprung and the blade dropped a few inches and then jammed.
He was taken back a few paces and people worked on the machine with much banging and cursing. Then he was led forward and his neck positioned again. The trip was sprung and again the blace jammed. So he was taken back again. And again much banging and cursing.
As he was led forward again he glanced up at the blade. “Wait a minute,” sez he, “I think I see your problem.”
Excellent.
Thanks!
David Simmons, you beat me to it, except the version I know has a doctor, and a lawyer as well as the engineer. The doctor and lawyer are freed when the guillotine malfunctions, but the engineer has the same punchline.
Not any big machines, but it does have a doctor and a lawyer. So it’s off-topic but I’m posting it anyway:
A doctor, a lawyer, and an engineer are out golfing. The group playing ahead of them is very slow, and keep making them wait. Eventually, they ask what the problem is, and find out that the group ahead is a foursome who are completely blind.
“How inspiring,” says the doctor, “I’m going to bring them into my clinic for free, to see if there is anything I can do for them.”
“How outrageous,” says the lawyer, “they should have some accomodation for their disability – I’m going to sue their insurance companies on their behalf!”
“Why can’t they play at night?” asks the engineer.
shakes fist at Lightray for beating me to it
Not at all relevant here, but I use it all the time:
The optimist claims that the glass is half full.
The pessimist claims that the glass is half empty.
The engineer states that the glass is too big.
Engineer’s recpie for chocolate chip cookies:
Chocolate Chip Cookies
Ingredients:
-
532.35 cm3 gluten -
4.9 cm3 NaHCO3 -
4.9 cm3 refined halite -
236.6 cm3 partially hydrogenated tallow triglyceride -
177.45 cm3 crystalline C12H22O11 -
177.45 cm3 unrefined C12H22O11 -
4.9 cm3 methyl ether of protocatechuic aldehyde -
Two calcium carbonate-encapsulated avian albumen-coated protein -
473.2 cm3 theobroma cacao -
236.6 cm3 de-encapsulated legume meats (sieve size #10)
Directions:
To a 2-L jacketed round reactor vessel (reactor #1) with an overall heat transfer
coefficient of about 100 Btu/F-ft2-hr, add ingredients one, two and three with
constant agitation.
In a second 2-L reactor vessel with a radial flow impeller
operating at 100 rpm, add ingredients four, five, six, and seven until the
mixture is homogenous.
To reactor #2, add ingredient eight, followed by three
equal volumes of the homogenous mixture in reactor #1.
Additionally, add ingredient nine and ten slowly, with constant agitation.
Care must be taken at this point in the reaction to control any temperature rise that may be the result of an exothermic reaction.
Using a screw extrude attached to a #4 nodulizer, place the mixture piece-meal
on a 316SS sheet (300 x 600 mm).
Heat in a 460K oven for a period of time that is in agreement with Frank & Johnston’s first order rate expression (see JACOS, 21, 55), or until golden brown.
Once the reaction is complete, place the sheet on a 25C heat-transfer table, allowing the product to come to equilibrium.
We’ve got this one in our copy room.
A man is flying in a hot air balloon and realizes he is lost. He reduces height and spots a man down below. He lowers the balloon further and shouts: “Excuse me, can you help me? I promised my friend I would meet him half an hour ago, but I don’t know where I am.”
The man below says: “Yes. You are in a hot air balloon, hovering approximately 30 feet above this field. You are between 40 and 42 degrees N. latitude, and between 58 and 60 degrees W. longitude.”
“You must be an engineer” says the balloonist.
“I am” replies the man. “How did you know.”
“Well” says the balloonist, “everything you have told me is technically correct, but I have no idea what to make of your information, and the fact is I am still lost.”
The man below says “You must be a manager.”
“I am” replies the balloonist, “but how did you know?”
“Well”, says the man, “you don’t know where you are, or where you are going. You have made a promise which you have no idea how to keep, and you expect me to solve your problem. The fact is you are in the exact same position you were in before we met, but now it is somehow my fault.”
A group of engineers at a party are arguing what sort of engineer God is.
The mechanical engineer says that God must be a mechanical engineer: “If you look at the skeleto-muscular system, with the perfect applications of support, force, and resistance that allows us to walk around on two feet and lift objects or perform fine work such as watch-making, it is clear that God is an ME.”
The chemical engineer says “No. Look at the endocrine and lymphatic systems and the way that just a hint of enzymes can trigger all sorts of necessary reactions while the stomach and intestines are able to manage highly corrosive acids. Look at the oxygen transfer in the blood system. It is clear that God has to be a chemical engineer”
The electrical engineer says “No, God has to be an electrical engineer. Look at the way the brain is connected to the entire body through the nervous system, controlling all the actions of the muscles while getting back all the sensory information. God is clearly an EE.”
The civil engineer speaks up last. "You guys think so? I always figured God was a civil engineer. Who else would run a sewer through a playground. "
There are any number of “engineer humor” (so called) web sites out there.
E.g., Engineering Jokes
An engineering student is heading back to the dorm after a late night studying. As he’s walking he hears the quiet campus and on the side of the sidewalk he hears a “ribbit.” Stopping he looks down and picks up the frog.
“Kiss me!” The frog blurts out.
The engineering student furrows his brow and puts the frog in his pocket before continuing to walk back to his dorm.
“Kiss me!” is muffled as it is cried from his pocket.
He stops and pulls the frog out and looks at it again, obviously quite confused.
“Kiss me! I’m a princess!”
He puts the frog in his backpack this time and resumes walking along.
“Stop!!! Kisssss meeeee!” He sighs and opens his bag and pulls the frog out.
“Why won’t you kiss me? I’ll be your girlfriend, you’ll be the envy of the campus!”
“Why would I want a girlfriend? They take time and money. But a talking frog? That’s damn cool!”
An oldtimer plant engineer retired after many years, with much wailing and gnashing of the teeth from the management, because he was the best plant engineer they ever had. No one could replace him…
About six months after he received his gold watch and pension, one of the machines on the production line failed, and none of the other engineers could figure out what was wrong. The the management called the old guy up, and asked him to come in as a consultant, because the line was down and it was costing them lots of money.
“We’ll pay you anything. We have to get our line going, and you designed that machine.”
The oldtimer agreed. He came into the plant, looked the machine over, pulled out a piece of chalk, and put a big X on one of the pieces.
“If you change that part, the machine will run.”
The maintenance crew did just that, and the machine ran beautifully.
The engineer submitted his bill for consulting services, to the tune of $50,000. The bean counters in accounts payable had several collective calves, and sent the bill back asking for an accounting of what he did.
The old engineer did provide his accounting.
“Piece of chalk, $1. Knowing where to to put the X, $49,999”
He got his money, and was never called to consult again.
An engineer rides up to some of his friends and says “You guys won’t believe what just happened to me!”
They ask him, and he explains:
“I was walking along, and this woman comes up on her bike, takes off all her clothes, and says ‘Everything I have is yours for the taking.’ So I took her bike.”
“Good idea,” say the friends, "her clothes wouldn’t have fit you anyway.
A true story.
I was a janitor in a factory, and I was brought in on a Saturday to clean spots on the carpet in a room that normally held about a hundred engineers. Only two were there that day. I worked my way through the room slowly, one spot at a time. When I got to one spot next to a table leg, one of the engineers spoke to the other one. “Hey, Wendell! He’s cleaning your spot. You owe me twenty bucks!”
How do you send an engineer insane?
Tie him to a chair and make him watch while you fold a map incorrectly.
Heh. When I worked at Monsanto, there was this wall in R building with all these pictures of researchers.
Every damn one was juuuust a bit crooked.
You could actually sit in the lobby and pick out the engineers by the twitching as they walked by.
(well, maybe you could have; me, I was twitching too much to notice…)
I heard it as:
The engineer states that the glass has twice the volume it requires.
/me nods his head in agreement at all the jokes… Too true.
Why did the engineers cross the road?
Well, we looked in our files, and that’s what we did last time.
You ask a mathematician, a physicist, and an engineer to calculate 2 times 2.
I don’t remember the first two responses, but the engineer pulls out a slide rule, and after a couple of seconds, says “approximately 4.00”