Sunday, April 24, 2016

Thinking Like A Physicist


From here.

This is a bit of an inside joke, but I don't know how to explain it in a way that would keep it funny.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Paraphrasing from Ian Stewart's Concepts of Modern Mathrmatics (republished by Dover in 1981 and 1995):

An astronomer, a physicist and and a mathematician are on a train from London to Edinburgh. Shortly after the cross the border and enter Scotland, they see a black sheep in a field.

"Oh, look", says the astronomer, "in Scotland, the sheep are black".

"No", says the physicist, "in Scotland, some of the sheep are black".

The mathematician sighs, and says: "No. In Scotland, there exists a field that contains at least one sheep at least one half of which is black".

andrew said...

Ha ha! That's great.

andrew said...

See also http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?id=4102 (comparing what scientists do) and even more on point http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?id=4092 (comparing different academics observations of a cow that they see while on a train).