science jokes jokes

Away in a Test Tube
(Melody: "Away in a Manger")

Away in a test tube
My plague cultures grow
On nutrient agar
Mankind's greatest foe

It's easy to grow them
If one does it right
At thirty-five Celsius
All day and all night

Once they are ready
You can let them go
To sicken the masses
With pus-filled buboes.

This was a story told to us by our chemistry master at school. A female student wished to make some potassium hydroxide solution (aqueous) and decided to throw a large lump of potassium into a bucket of water.

Her professor observed what she was about to do, out of the corner of his eye and hurried towards her, and after confirming this was what she was intending to do, asked her first to stir the water in the bucket for five minutes before adding the potassium.

She was puzzled and ran after him to ask the purpose of this action.

'It will give me time to get away' said the professor.

After intensive investigation on both the Soviet and US parts, spokespersons from both space agencies have determined the cause for the accident which has placed the station and its resident personnel in jeopardy.

In terse statements at a recent press conference, Soviet and US space agency spokespersons said Thursday We have concluded joint investigations concerning this potentially tragic accident and each nations' team, separately, has arrived at identical conclusions for this incident.

The accident was caused by one thing and one thing only: OBJECTS IN MIR ARE CLOSER THAN THEY APPEAR.

Graptolites (Melody: Danny Boy)
by Brenna Lorenz

Oh, graptolites -
Your stipes, your stipes are calling
From every shale in every ancient land;
Oh, graptolites -
Through dream's dark oceans falling,
Your rhabdosomes with grace in every strand.

Oh, take me back to Cambro-Ordovician days,
With all your youth and glory in full blaze -
You lived to see a mighty ocean wax and wane,
But modern oceans spread for you in vain.

Dendroidea -
Your autothecae smiling,
Through Tremodocian trials they would last -
Dendroidea -
Your bithecae are crying,
For when you fade, alas, they too must pass.

Why did you leave the ocean bottom safe and wide
To drift with plankton on the roving tide?
Oh, Dictyonema, from thy thecal loins emerged
Proud Graptoloids, that from their past diverged.