Science is a lot of things. It’s a person in a lab coat experimenting with different materials as well as an astronaut bouncing around in zero gravity. It’s a geologist studying rocks and a mathematician perusing books. It’s an archeologist out on an expedition and a biologist monitoring different animal species.
That’s the great thing about science—it’s vast. It is also useful because of discoveries that allow us to advance in this world. It is exciting because it gives us new prospects to aspire to. It is ongoing, inspiring, devastating, beautiful and, also, funny.
The list below is all about the funny side of science. The jokes, the puns, the memes, and other ridiculousness that was collected and posted on The Lighter Side of Science Facebook group. Scroll down to see our favorites.
This post may include affiliate links.
Because science is so vast and multilayered, learning about it can be quite challenging. That’s partly because there’s so much to learn but also because it’s easy to get scared of how much there is to learn. That is where the science communication people come in. They are the ones that combine science and fun to make it appealing to all.
These are passionate people who make it their mission to spread the word of science to the common, non-science related folk. Sometimes they are researchers or medical professionals themselves and sometimes they are well-informed journalists that want the people around them to better understand the world. Either way, they are helping everyone to get excited about science.
Our whole attict is a bat sanctuary. They fly around the house at night, catching mosquitoes and we love the little buggers. Sometime they crash in the grass and I use welding gloves to gently put them back. When I grew up a tv tower was built nearby, the poor bats got disorientated and every morning I found dozens in tve grass
While popularizing science has been a thing since the invention of media and the printing press, the most notable figures emerged in recent years. One of them is Carl Sagan.
Sagan was an astronomer and did a lot of research into the possibility of extraterrestrial lives. However, it wasn’t his discovery or any of his 600 papers that made him famous. It was his show Cosmos that was aired in 1980 that made him undoubtedly one of the most popular scientists back in the day.
Of course, he wasn’t a nobody before he landed the show. The science community appreciated him for his research and advocacy, though some were a little put off by his speculative approach to science. Still, he taught at Harvard and then earned his position as a full-time professor at Cornell. He was also working with NASA since the inception of the US space program in the '50s. He even briefed Apollo astronauts before going to the Moon.
Now if it were on a Perch.. Tastes like Chicken... Chicken of the sea.
He became better-known to the public after he published his best-selling science-fiction book The Dragons of Eden, which won him a Pulitzer Prize in 1977. Because of this, he was invited to write and narrate Cosmos. In it, he delved into various different topics related to space and the world around us. He told fascinating stories that got people excited about our universe.
Remember, if it bites you and you die, its venomous. If you bite it and you die, its poisonous. If it bites itself and you die, its voodoo. If you both bite each other and neither of you die, its kinky.
The 13-part series was well received by both the audience and the critics. It won an Emmy and a Peabody Award, and also became the most widely watched series in the history of American television and held that record for a whole decade after. As a result, Sagan became a cultural icon.
There is no point in having these. Unnecessary and messy... time to phase these out... I'm staying inside with all my doors shut tight... and a blow torch in case my chair turns into a spider.
In the show, he often said “billions and billions” referring to and emphasizing the innumerable amount of things in the universe. This became his catchphrase and a part of the cultural vocabulary in the '80s. Musicians were including it in their songs and comedians were incorporating it into their routines.
Furthermore, now “sagan” can be used as a unit of measurement that is equivalent to a very large number of anything (at least 4 billion or more). His name is also used when referring to the number of stars observable in the universe. This is called Sagan’s number and at the moment it’s estimated to be 300 sextillion.
When you put it like that, it makes you wonder what on earth they were doing? Also, what was going through the mind of the first person to milk a cow? I suppose we should just be thankful that they didn't do it to a bull first.
I love it when a 4 year old is so much more intelligent than a grown person.
To this day, Sagan is highly admired by many. He made many people curious about the world and even nudged some towards scientific careers. And sure, this list can never compare to the perfect knowledge and entertainment balance that he achieved in his masterpiece of a series, but, hey, it’s still pretty darn funny.
Me, a Japanese speaker who has heard a love song that mentioned being “only 10cm apart”: sounds like a you problem
Do you mind? I'm trying to do my job here.
In all seriousness, the regenerating teeth would be awesome but wouldn't be feasible, because permanent, non-replacing teeth were actually one of the great innovations in the evolution of mammals. If your teeth are always falling out and growing back, you never run out, but you also can't develop feeding strategies that rely on your teeth meeting up in a certain way, a.k.a chewing. Permanent teeth allowed the first mammals to start specializing teeth to do different jobs; if their teeth were all in different stages of development, it wouldn't work, because once you get beyond simple plant-tearing pegs or sharp points, your teeth have to make contact with each other the same way all the time to be useable. ('The Rise And Reign Of The Mammals' is a fascinating book if you have any interest in evolutionary history.) Edit: book title
Dont go sticking your hands in those pockets, there is no loose change and if you touch me afterwards I'm gonna puke on your shirt... mucus is gross!! ITS A MUCUS pocket!! worse than a sweaty pocket!!
That is actually a great answer but sadly they will tell you back how Youtube is free for people and not edited by pedo socialist satanists like the washington post
I am 1 on this scale, also can anyone else imagine different sides of something they’ve seen before without seeing the sides? Because if I see the side of say a bottle I am able to imagine what all other views of the bottle look like, I can also do that with rooms and I can imagine a room from a bunch of different angles and all of the people and objects in that room
I’m a five, so that’s literally impossible to imagine 😅 Wait, so you can close your eyes and rotate an apple in your mind’s eye?
Load More Replies...
My brain is having conniptions trying to imagine being a 5 and NOT seeing objects as I think of them!!🍎
Yes, I literally can't imagine not being able to imagine
Load More Replies...
Tbh, I'm not sure where I fall on the scale. Like I THINK I seea red apple but it's not super clear like if I were actually looking at a picture
I'm a 1 on this scale, I also "hear" words when I'm thinking. I was amazed when I found out that's not the case for everyone.
What do you mean hear them? As audio? Or 'heat them as in you aren't reading 'text' in your mind
Load More Replies...
As an artist, I imagine my paintings before I put brush to paper. I don't know how I'd be able to paint if I was a 5 on this scale! I wonder whether there are many artists who are 5s.
I used to be a 5, but I had health episode which means I'm now a 1, except when I'm dreaming 😔
Does this mean that when 5’s dream it’s just a bunch of words whizzing through the darkness?
People with aphantasia usually dream, we just can't do it intentionally or while waking.
Load More Replies... I'm a 5 but I've developed a neat workaround for this. I really like calculus and abstract spacial concepts like minkowski spacetime which are very hard to comprehend without visualization. I can't see inside my head, but I can render things and "feel" where they are. It's like the sense where you close your eyes but you can still tell where your limbs are. If I want to picture what a certain graph would look like or transform a plane in a 3 dimensional space (or higher which is a real trip to think about), I generate that concept and focus my eyes on a point to busy my vision while I go inside my mind to feel what I'm thinking of. It's a lot less complicated than it sounds and I can only do it with simple colorless shapes that have no visual properties, let alone something complex like an apple. I also have no words to narrate my thoughts so I think in essentially data and information with a background process that randomly cross references the things I know to make more connections.
I can read fast and am really good and pattern recognition, but my working memory is very lacking since I have no way to easily hold concrete information in words or images. Memorizing scripts and speeches is absolute hell for me and I have issues with not being very well spoken on the spot, but I can write pretty well since I understand words intuitively. Life is pretty interesting like this, I blame the neurodivergence for making me think like a computer lol.
Load More Replies... I never understood it when people would say “the mind’s eye” or “picture this”, or people would daydream. I just thought it meant thinking about it. I also don’t have an inner monologue. Like what is that? Do people hear a voice saying “You need to get up and go to the kitchen”. Is it like a voice in their head giving them directions? On the plus side, I have very vivid lucid dreams
I assumed everyone had intense visual imagery. I can smell and taste food as well- I’ve dreamt up flavours and made cakes etc from scratch. Not always successful!
i'm a 3 and i visualize it in my brain to, not in front of me or in my hands
So that's why I never could explain, how I do math in my head - I was the only one with a half-way visual approach.
I'm a 5, tell me to visualize something and all I will get is vibes.
Hm, maybe 3. Not all thoughts are visual and I can have some trouble developing details. But there are some 2 days.
The first day of organic chemistry I, my teacher said that eventually we would be able to "see" the chemical reactions in our minds. It finally happened to me half way through O Chem II.
Also, I see maps in my mind. Whenever I hear a geography question, I zoom in on the map in my head
Load More Replies... 
I think you can develop it. I can turn off visualization and internal monologue, ya'll just gotta figure out how to turn yours on.
Being a 5 is not dramatic, but might require some attention to how to deal with this. Sometimes it has effects on a wide range of skills, from being able to navigate up to social skills
Yes!!!! I am very sad that the fallout effects of these gifts are often looked at as lunacy, lies, making stuff up, handicaps, etc..., all the way up to mental illnesses!! WTAF
Load More Replies... If someone told me to see an apple in my mind, like right NOW, I’m a 5.
And many people do not have an inner dialogue at all. They do not think in words,, just images. I guess that explains how logical thinking is not universal.
The audacity to think this. Imagine assuming that because someone thinks in a way different than you it means that they're unintelligent.
Load More Replies...
It always amazes me when people complain that they "aren't going to need something later in life." Sometimes knowledge is just good to expand your brain capacity and enlarge your knowledge base. I have never regretted having learned something and I have been surprised over my life how many things I thought were "useless" at the time have turned out to helpful later.
Goodwill: [throws body straight into skip]
Tiny compared with my plan to build a collider that circumnavigates Australia.
So I get the shadow, but I'm trying to wrap my mind around the circular rainbow
This is mistaken for a circular rainbow but it's not. Rainbows are much larger. This is what's called glory. It's an optical effect due to sunlight interfering with small droplets, so things like clouds, mist, fog. It appears on the antisolar point, which means the opposite end of a line going through you from the sun. So naturally, it ends up right at your shadow.
Yeah mens are so affraid of women we never heard about men hitting, raping or killing a woman like ever !
Okay, I’ve gotten to the bottom of this list, and my cat is still asleep on my shoulder, and never stays on me this long. I desperately need a shower and to get on with my day, but he’s softly purring in my ear. He also copies me if I take a deep breath in, it’s so cute! What do I do???
Okay, I’ve gotten to the bottom of this list, and my cat is still asleep on my shoulder, and never stays on me this long. I desperately need a shower and to get on with my day, but he’s softly purring in my ear. He also copies me if I take a deep breath in, it’s so cute! What do I do???
