Our boy, AG, is referring to a joke: a dairy farmer asks a physicist how to estimate milk production. The physicist begins the calculations with, “Assume a spherical cow,” and takes it from there. Physicists are famous for this. They call it simplifying the model. Sometimes they have a problem that’s too complicated to be […]
physics
I was helping an astronomer write a sentence. It was about disentangling the color a supernova has intrinsically, from the reddening in its color caused by cosmic dust. He wrote he wanted to “break the degeneracy” between the colors. Break the degeneracy. I got so excited. I’d always thought degenerates were people who didn’t, for […]
My dad and I share an obsession with endurance sports. We don’t just love to get outside and ride our bikes, we actually feel antsy and anxious if we go too many days without working up a sweat. As I’ve written elsewhere, our compulsion for exercise has a genetic basis. Dad and I probably have […]
AG’s little mouseover says, “. . .except algebraic geometry. Algebraic geometry pretty much sucks.” I’m going to have to take his word for it, I’m profoundly innumerate. Moreover, if AG hadn’t added the caption, I would have said this cartoon was about physics. Physics is the science, the knowledge; math is just the language — […]
If you remember from our last episode, Abstruse Goose: Moment of Clarity 1, our plucky hero has had a moment of clarity about quantum mechanics. The clarity was brief and, sadly, it passed. He tried again months later and this time, he hung onto his moment long enough to begin fretting about quantum spin. The […]
You doubtless remember quantum mechanics: the deeply incomprehensible chain of reasoning about how particles are also waves; and the waves aren’t physical but waves of probability; and any given thing about which you’re certain means you’re uncertain about something else. And so on, far into the night. The worst thing about it is, apparently it’s […]
Some atoms, like the ones on the skin of your hand, are happy to give up their electrons. And the electrons congregate in some mysterious way, as AG says, into a band of brothers. The band is relentlessly negative, so when you get near enough to something positive, like a dryer or a doorknob, the […]
Abstruse Goose added a mysterious little tag that says something like, “Now, how many pop culture references can you find?” None for me, not one, geezer that I apparently am. But I did get the astronomy/physics references. The stardust one: maybe you already know this but most every element — the lithium in our batteries, […]