Understandin Engineers (HUMOR)

To the optimist, the glass is half full. To the pessimist, the glass is half empty. To the engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

A pastor, a doctor and an engineer were waiting one morning for a particularly slow group of golfers. The engineer fumed, "What's with these guys? We must have been waiting for 15 minutes!" The doctor chimed in, "I don't know, but I've never seen such ineptitude!" The pastor said, "Hey, here comes the greens keeper. Let's have a word with him." "Hi George! Say, what's 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 firefighters. They lost their sight saving our clubhouse from a fire last year, so we always let them play for free anytime." The group was silent for a moment. The pastor said, "That's so sad. I think I will say a special prayer for them tonight." The doctor said, "Good idea. And I'm going to contact my ophthalmologist buddy and see if there's anything he can do for them." The engineer said, "Why can't these guys play at night?"

What is the difference between Mechanical Engineers and Civil Engineers? Mechanical Engineers build weapons and Civil Engineers build targets.

The graduate with a Science degree asks, "Why does it work?" The graduate with an Engineering degree asks, "How does it work?" The graduate with an Accounting degree asks, "How much will it cost?" The graduate with an Arts degree asks, "Do you want fries with that?"

"Normal people 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"

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, and 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, now that's cool."

A civil engineer builds huge things you have to drive around the outside of and look at with binoculars from afar. Given a huge budget and decades to build, most of the time these last a long time.

A structural engineer builds big things you can walk around the inside of and look at from the ground floor. Given a big enough budget and a few years to build, most of the time they stay standing.

A mechanical engineer builds big-sized things you can walk around the outside of and look at from the room they are in. Given a enough budget, a good mechanic, and lots of parts, most of the time they can start up. Sometimes they even keep running.

An electrical engineer builds medium-sized things you can put your hand on that fit inside the mechanical engineer's toys. These are connected to copper wires that are connected to something else. Given a power supply, a long enough extension cord, and a switch, most of the time they start. Unless they don't. Then you need a schematic. And an electrician. And a screwdriver.

An electronics engineer builds small things you can put on your hand that fit inside something else. These are connected to copper wires that are almost invisible. Given enough replacement parts, some of the time they work. Unless they don't. Then you need more replacement parts. And an electronics technician. And a parts warehouse. And a pair of tweezers.

A software engineer claims he builds invisible things that are written in incomprehensible text on disks and tapes that can't be read by a human being. These disks and tapes are used by other electronic devices programmed by other software engineers in other places that aren't compatible with the first software engineer in the first place. Once upon a time, some of these programs are said to work sometimes in certain conditions, but always need enhancements and changes and revisions. Unless they have bugs. Then you need more programmers to write more bugs to remove the first bugs. And a magician.

Santa - An Engineer's Perspective

There are approximately two billion children (persons under 18) in the world.

However, since Santa does not visit children of Muslim, Hindu, Jewish or Buddhist religions, this reduces the workload for Christmas night to 15% of the total, or 378 million (according to the Population Reference Bureau).

At an average (census) rate of 3.5 children per household, that comes to 108 million homes, presuming that there is at least one good child in each.

Santa has about 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he travels east to west (which seems logical).This works out to 967.7 visits per second.

This is to say that for each Christian household with a good child, Santa has around 1/1000th of a second to park the sleigh, hop out, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left for him, get back up the chimney, jump into the sleigh and get on to the next house.

Assuming that each of these 108 million stops is evenly distributed around the earth (which, of course, we know to be false, but will accept for the purposes of our calculations), we are now talking about 0.78 miles per household; a total trip of 75.5 million miles, not counting bathroom stops or breaks. This means Santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second - 3,000 times the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the fastest man-made vehicle, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second, and a conventional reindeer can run (at best) 15 miles per hour.

The payload of the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium sized Lego set (two pounds),the sleigh is carrying over 500 thousand tons, not counting Santa himself. On land, a conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting that the "flying" reindeer could pull ten times the normal amount, the job can't be done with eight or even nine of them-Santa would need 360,000 of them. This increases the payload, not counting the weight of the sleigh, another 54,000 tons, or roughly seven times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth (the ship, not the monarch). 600,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance-this would heat up the reindeer in the same fashion as a spacecraft re-entering the earth's atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer would absorb 14.3 quintillion joules of energy per second each.

In short, they would burst into flames almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them and creating deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire reindeer team would be vaporised within 4.26 thousandths of a second, or right about the time Santa reached the fifth house on his trip. Not that it matters, however, since Santa, as a result of accelerating from a dead stop to 650 m.p.s. in 0.001 seconds, would be subjected to centrifugal forces of 17,500 g's. A 250 pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of the sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force, instantly crushing his bones and organs and reducing him to a quivering blob of pink goo.

Therefore, if Santa did exist, he's dead now!

Merry Christmas All :)

OK, Last one...

A doctor, a priest and an engineer are standing on the first tee waiting for the foursome is front of them to finish the hole. After nearly 20 minutes the course ranger drives up and the three inquire as to why he has not hurried them along. He explains all four men are firemen that were blinded while saving the club house from a fire and they were permitted to play the course at will. The doctor says he knows a brilliant ophthalmologist that may be able to save their sight and says he will contact him that evening. The priest says he will pray for them. The engineer asks “Why can’t they play at night?”

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