[2016-04-12] We can't repel a diagnosis of this magnitude!

Blame Quintushalls for this.

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Tony
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Joined: Mon Mar 24, 2014 3:57 pm

[2016-04-12] We can't repel a diagnosis of this magnitude!

Post by Tony »

http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?id=4078

My first guess (no pun intended) is that it's a reference to zeroth-order approximation. Any other ideas?

Cley Faye
Posts: 1
Joined: Tue Apr 12, 2016 3:43 pm

Re: [2016-04-12] We can't repel a diagnosis of this magnitud

Post by Cley Faye »

This comic is funny, but only if you're a physicist :wink: .

(yes, I registered just to say that. Hi everyone.)

lucidfox
Posts: 1
Joined: Tue Apr 12, 2016 4:11 pm

Re: [2016-04-12] We can't repel a diagnosis of this magnitud

Post by lucidfox »

I don't get it. And I usually do get SMBC, so that's new and puzzling.

Guest

Re: [2016-04-12] We can't repel a diagnosis of this magnitud

Post by Guest »

The joke is physicists round stuff. if it's an object with a couple of sides, it's basically a circle. If it's closeish to ten, it's basically ten.

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Astrogirl
so close, yet so far
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[2016-04-12] 10. 10. Circle. Circle. 10.

Post by Astrogirl »

Microaggression? Microaggression!

9squirrels

Re: [2016-04-12] We can't repel a diagnosis of this magnitud

Post by 9squirrels »

Sounds more like an engineer to me than a physicist. I studied electronics engineering and I saw a lecturer cancel Pi with a 3 ("It's close enough").

john

Re: [2016-04-12] We can't repel a diagnosis of this magnitud

Post by john »

an astrophysicist once told me that they use 3 for pi because with the vast dimensions and huge errors they deal with it doesn't really matter how many decimal places one uses.

Theo

Re: [2016-04-12] We can't repel a diagnosis of this magnitud

Post by Theo »

Theoretical physicist here. That comic made me laugh, because it is acutally quite accurate.

See, as a physicist it isn't your job to calculate numbers. A computer or calculator can do this for you, and they are way faster and make no mistakes (unless you tell them to ;) ). It is your job to analyze the deeper structure of the things itself, their dynamics and connections, to find models, formulas and relations characterizing the systems at hand. As such, you are interested patterns. It is intersting to know the magnitude, because the magnitude tells you something about competing scales.

For example if you want to compute the movement of the sun around the orbit, gravitational effects on (roughly) the same scale are interesting. This applies the sun, or too an lesser extend even the moon. Both influence the track of the earth in its orbit significantly. But obviously you can neglect effects on a lower scale (for example a single human spinning around its own axis, influencing the angular momentum of the planet). So it is nice to know if the number you are looking at is ~ 10 or ~ 100 or ~ 1000, but not if its 8, 13 or 5. For a theoretical physicist, the gravitational law looks like F ~ m1* m2 * 1/r^2. No one cares for the constant accompanying ;). In this context, i also saw people writing pi = 1 (though most of the time, pi is kept, because it tells you something about the structure of a formula).

It is very much the same with shapes. A rectangular and a circle are topological pretty much the same. Assuming that you don't make a large error replacing one with another, most of the time you do this, if it is easier to calculate.

Sauzels

Re: [2016-04-12] We can't repel a diagnosis of this magnitud

Post by Sauzels »

So do her teeth just temporarily fall out on panel 5?

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Astrogirl
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Re: [2016-04-12] We can't repel a diagnosis of this magnitud

Post by Astrogirl »

Sauzels wrote:So do her teeth just temporarily fall out on panel 5?
Yes.
Microaggression? Microaggression!

a1s
Posts: 37
Joined: Fri Jan 16, 2015 1:29 pm

Re: [2016-04-12] We can't repel a diagnosis of this magnitud

Post by a1s »

Sauzels wrote:So do her teeth just temporarily fall out on panel 5?
That's a physical brain-worm. You can see it moving between panels.

ologisticAlgorist

Re: [2016-04-12] We can't repel a diagnosis of this magnitud

Post by ologisticAlgorist »

So do her teeth just temporarily fall out on panel 5?
Her teeth are approximately there.

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