I nominate the Elephant (an old favorite) and El Nino for the hall of fame.
That was the best paper I've ever read.

In my high school chemistry class, I didn't know the solution to a problem, so I told my professor a joke in the answer space. I got partial credit. These are great.

I got sent an email last week with all of those plus I think a couple more. I'm a TA who has to mark exams and I love stuff like this. If it's really creative I try to find a way to give a half mark or so.

LF Anecdote:
When I was in organic chemistry in second year I got the question: "How would you synthesize this molecule?" There was a schematic of some obscure compound. I answered it with the sentence "I would hire an organic chemist." I never saw the exam so I have no idea what the comment the marker left on it was. Knowing my horrible school it probably wasn't even acknowledged as creativity is frowned upon here.

personally i nominate the 'calculus' one, mostly cos it made me lol, also cos i've worked around engineers and ph.d. types all my life and that's what i feel like anytime the subject of maths comes up.

Thanks Jan! These are all so funny! I forwarded all to a math proffesor friend of mine.

Goofy test answers is one of my most favoritest things ever - laughing a lot over here.

I want to find a way to work the phrase "Jeremy, please, a little less drama" into my everyday conversation.

I lol'd at expand, LOL'd at El Nino.

When I was at law school, we were doing mock exams and I went blank during my Wills paper. So I drew a gravestone and wrote on it "In Memory Of My Memory, departed this day ..."

The lecturer said it gave him a laugh but that I must not, on pain of total failure and the end of my career before it's even started, do anything like that in the finals because the Law Society examiners have no sense of humour whatsoever.

Astonishingly I got a distinction in my Wills paper. And I have managed to go through my entire legal career without ever writing a Will.

HA! Thanks for the chuckles.

A friend of mine had a test in Philosophy which consisted of one question: "Why does God exist?" His answer: "Why not?" He claims he got an "A."

ericb: I've heard of that and I thought that was a university myth!

Why, take the case of Thales, Theodorus. While he was studying the stars and looking upwards, he fell into a pit, and a neat, witty Thracian servant girl jeered at him, they say, because he was so eager to know the things in the sky that he could not see what was there before him at his very feet.
Plato Theaetetus (174a)

Lolphilosophers!

ericb: I've heard of that and I thought that was a university myth!

I've always suspected that as well. Another "university myth."

I teach introductory American politics at a large, faceless state university. This course is required not just by the university but by state law, so student interest in the class is generally low. Anyhow, I give multiple-choice exams, and sometimes I throw in a joke answer so that they really only have to pick from 3 answers instead of 4. I have had nontrivial numbers of students tell me that:

(1) The process that's actually called "senatorial courtesy" is known as "The Eiger Sanction"
(2) Amicus curiae briefs are cut high on the hips.
(3) Kramer vs. Kramer was an important civil liberties case.
(4) So was Bulls v. Ditka.
(5) So was Spencer v. Tracy.
(6) So was Grignr v. Eye of Argon Ltd.
(7) So, for that matter, was O'Hara v. Butler.

However, nobody has ever suggested that state judges in Texas are selected by gladiatorial combat.

Two things that may or may not be university myths:

1. A professor I had was handing out the end-of-year evaluation forms. He said that in a prior year, one of the students raised his hand and said, "Is 'piss poor' spelled with a hyphen?"
2. A physics prof was giving a test and told the students they could bring "anything they could carry" to assist. One student walked in carrying a physics grad student on his back.