Barrington High School

Centrifugal Force

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.
    * 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.