Comics about mathematics, science, and the student life.

Creative Writing

The professor: "To begin your training as a researcher, I've enrolled you in a creative writing class." Student: "Shouldn't I be doing science?" Professor: "No, no. You first have to be good at writing catchy titles so that people actually read your work!"

“This sounds more like manipulation than science.”

“Hey, I’m just looking out for you as your supervisor.”

23 Oct 2019

Legal Moves

The professor: "Is the next step we are going to take fully legal? Hell no. Are we going to do it anyway and save ten minutes of tedious busywork?" Rest of class: "Hell yes!"

Did you hear that? It’s the sound of mathematicians rolling around in their graves.

21 Oct 2019

Student Confidence

The professor asks two students if they need help with a difficult experiment, but one student replies confidently that they won't have any trouble. As soon as the professor leaves, the student who was confident asks the other what to do.

I mean, I’m sure you were listening when she explained what we had to do, right?

18 Oct 2019

Briefly Explain

A graph showing the relationship between understanding and the length of an answer. Decent knowledge can be shown with concise answers, but there comes a huge cliff in which students start writing a lot to cover up their ignorance.

Let’s hope the teacher is impressed by the amount of writing I’ve given. Surely that’s a signal for quality!

16 Oct 2019

Law of Bad Timing

In the first panel, there is one minute left on the test, and the student can't quite figure out the solution. As they walk out, the solution strikes them.

“Professor, can you come touch my test?”

“Okay, I can collect it if you want.”

“No! I just want to stimulate my brain to think the test is over, so I can get some better ideas.”

14 Oct 2019

Discounting

There is a big opportunity for a student with plenty of positives, but they choose instead to focus on the small negative part.

My specialty is magnifying the negative part of any opportunity by a huge amount.

11 Oct 2019

Postcard Knowledge

A physicist gives a postcard to their friend that contains the field equations for general relativity, and exclaims how awesome that is. The friend doesn't understand any of it, and the physicist isn't surprised, since you need a huge textbook to decode it.

The information is hidden in plain sight. You just have to go through years and years of education to decode it!

09 Oct 2019

No Minus Signs

A physicist presents their new breakthrough: a way to do physics without minus signs.

The Nobel Prize of 2019 is awarded for the astonishing advances in the language of physics, removing the need for pesky signs that vex both students and seasoned researchers alike.

07 Oct 2019

Welcome Sign

A door of a theorist with a sign that says: Theorist at work. NO INTERRUPTIONS (Unless you have data supporting my theory)

I’m not joking. If you have questions about the homework, go pester a grad student. Isn’t that what they are there for?

04 Oct 2019

Experimentalist Woes

Two physicists discuss the huge experimental effort needed to detect a particle, while theorists can postulate ten more in the meantime. One reassures the other by saying that at least the data they are working to acquire will likely last much longer than those wacky theoretical ideas.

If you want to feel better, I’d suggest creating a small bump in the next data dump. You will make the theorists go crazy trying to predict what’s going on!

02 Oct 2019