Comics about mathematics, science, and the student life.

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

Order

A student realizes they have an exam early in the morning. Instead of moving their other obligations to later times, they decide to front load everything even earlier so they don't break the usual chain of events.

I can’t be the only one who runs before the sun comes up in order to be done before school! Right?!

09 Sep 2019

Simplification

Two people are asked to imagine a car going down a hill. The regular person imagines a car driving down, while the physics student imagines a block of mass M sliding down a wedge.

If we taught you correctly in school, you won’t ever imagine any “real” objects. Those are for the engineers to worry about!

06 Sep 2019

Mopping

The first person is impressed with how the second is a researcher, and says that it must be awesome. The researcher replies that they sometimes feel just like a janitor. The first person is confused, and the researcher explains that, sometimes, they have to go ahead and clean up the literature of a bunch of mistakes.

“But wait, isn’t the scientific literature peer-reviewed and free of mistakes?”

“Yes, I think that was the dream at some point…”

04 Sep 2019

Old Material

A student complains in class because the teacher is going over material they covered last semester. The teacher is surprised that the student covered everything in the textbook, and the student clarifies that they *only* got to Chapter Four.

I suspect the number of students who ever cover the material in an entire textbook of any kind is vanishingly small. And yet, we often get to the end of the semester thinking that we’ve learned all we need to know about a subject.

02 Sep 2019