Things My Extremely Italian Physics Professor Has Said:

Michael Collins

Math

Geologist: I do more math than you might think

Chemist: I mean, chemical equations are basically mathematical equations. If you think about it (I also do math math)

Physicist: Oh, yeah, it’s all math but we just handwave it

Mathematician: YOU DO WHAT!?

Quantum Physicist: *regularly does math that is literally beyond human comprehension* *now resides in a higher plane of existence*

Engineer: If I don’t do this math correctly PEOPLE WILL DIE

Military Scientist: If I don’t do this math correctly PEOPLE WILL SURVIVE

Topologist: If I don’t do this math correctly PEOPLE WILL BE MOSTLY UNAFFECTED

Philosopher: But what even IS math, really? No seriously, what is it?

Organic Chemist: I kinda forgot how to do math, to be honest

Biologist: I literally only chose this field so I wouldn’t have to do as much math. I love stamp collecting

Biostatistician: wtf

Gotta love mathematicians for never being able to name concepts normally

It's Elephants Foot Friday!!!!

RB to instantly receive 8000 roentgens of radiation

It's so funny to me that people think of Math/Mathematicians as being hyper-logical and rational. Like, have you seen some of the wild things hiding in the Math?

Did you know there are non-computable numbers?? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaitin%27s_constant)

Did you know that there are things that are true, but we can't prove them??? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del%27s_incompleteness_theorems)

Did you know that we can prove that something exists, and yet never actually figure out what that thing is?? (https://mathworld.wolfram.com/NonconstructiveProof.html)

Math is crazy. Math is wild. Math hardly makes sense, and when you think you understand the weirdest parts of it, everyone who hears you explain it to thinks you're a gibbering lunatic.

"In mathematics you don’t understand things. You just get used to them." - von Neumann

(please share more unhinged math with me, i want to see more scary math)

My favorite example of girl math is when David Hilbert and Albert Einstein couldn't solve how energy conservation worked in general relativity, so Hilbert asked Emmy Noether about it and she solved it for them.

A video can have a log scale that's misaligned with both the time AND space axes.

Log Alignment [Explained]

Transcript Under the Cut

[Distorted bar graph on top of gray log scale lines in the background that are somewhat tilted, with the lower ends on the left]

[Caption below the panel:] There's actually no rule in math that says your log scales have to be aligned with your graph axes.

My latest cartoon for New Scientist

Here's the link to the video

👏 SAY 👏 IT 👏 LOUDER 👏