Comics about mathematics, science, and the student life.

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

Risky Path

In the top panel, a student digs a hole, wondering if it's worth continuing on this path. Then, the bottom two panels show the student hitting either treasure or fallling into a trap. A visual metaphor for trying something new on the test.

Why do I always get an urge to be adventurous at the riskiest of times?!

30 Sep 2019

Code Hygiene

A student hands in his thesis, and the supervisor is impressed by the formatting of it. They comment that the student must have very clean code. In the second panel, we see the student struggling to get a figure aligned, and looking for a hack that will fix it, not caring about the code looking ugly.

I’ve said this before. You can tell a lot about a person by how their LaTeX code looks.

27 Sep 2019

Homework Time

A graph depicting the proportion of time spent on homework. A small part is for doing the assignment itself, while the bulk is in fixing mistakes, cleaning up the work, and hunting down minus signs.

I’m notorious for spending far too much time on little details that ultimately aren’t important. I just can’t stand having something slightly wrong when it could be fixed!

25 Sep 2019

Compliance

A student tells a friend that they got a 95 in their class, so they can move up to Compliance 200. The friend hopes that they will be able to as well. Two adults watch on from afar, and observe that people will do anything when a grade is attached to the activity.

I find it a bit sad that we can get so wrapped up in grades that we forget to enjoy the subject themselves. Some of us end up playing the “meta-game” of school.

23 Sep 2019

Tearing It Up

The professor tells the students that they can rip off the last page of the exam for the formula sheet. A student tries to do this in one smooth motion, and ends up ripping the sheet in half.

Apparently, I’m trying to make this webcomic autobiographical.

20 Sep 2019

One and Done

Two friends are talking. One observes that they have never seen the other one read, and the other person replies that they tried reading once, and didn't like it, so they gave up.

If we opened our eyes just a little bit more, we would realize that we didn’t have a good experience, not that we don’t like the activity itself.

Apply this to any activity you want to convince someone to try.

18 Sep 2019

Operational Definition

The professor asks for the difference between a theorem and a lemma. A student replies that a theorem is something they need to memorize for a test, while a lemma is something they can immediately forget.

Unfortunately, I think we’ve all been in the situation where we needed to recall some obscure lemma that we were sure wasn’t going to be on the test.

16 Sep 2019

Recently

A number line showing how people use the word 'recently'. From cosmologists to high-energy physicists.

We’ve got experts covering all time scales!

13 Sep 2019

Shaking Off

A researcher drives their pickup truck fast while undergraduates try to cling on for dear life from the back.

It’s okay, I’m making these students more resilient. They will thank me for this extra training!

11 Sep 2019