Top Ten Academic Subjects Physicists Enjoy Mocking Most

Chemists are easy targets. They argue in favor of their subject, but from the perspective of scientists whose academic focus shares their roots and encompasses quantum mechanics and atomic physics, they argue too much. Chemists tend to extensively rant about how their subject is superior to everything. Like fluorine, they're extremely volatile and potentially dangerous when this is challenged or even slightly implied that someone disagrees. So, as far as I'm concerned, the taunting chemists get is brought upon themselves.

Physicists like to remind chemists that they went through all the trouble developing chemistry, which now stands as a separate and inferior science. Chemists know their science is built around physics, so their only counter-argument is a wild rant about its superiority.

We also mock their love for naming things. One thing I detested about chemistry class was the need to recall the long and unnecessarily descriptive names of organic molecules, from 1,3-dimethylbutan-2-one to 2,5,6-trichlorooctanal. I can't forget the most tedious extracurricular lecture imaginable, where a group was spellbound by the rotational symmetry in these carbon chains, like kindergarteners. If you think I'm exaggerating, you have no idea. As a great physicist once said, this is stamp collecting. Chemists look at the molecules, count their carbon atoms, quickly describe and dismiss their electronic spin configurations, but it is physics that fundamentally dictates how these molecules behave. This is a strong argument many physics enthusiasts, such as myself, use to justify the significance of physics and provoke other sciences, particularly chemistry.

I should emphasize that throughout high school, I loved annoying my chemistry teachers in the same way that would have been mocked by the scientific community. Waste of my energy? I think not!

For some part, we like to make fun of ourselves. We propose absurd joke theories and joke about how "dumb" our actual theories are, "explaining" them as if to non-experts, including some truly appalling puns. Mocking each other by the tendency to bring down entire projects is also part of the equation.

In other respects, we laugh off some really far-fetched proposals made by physicists of a different but similar background and laugh at ourselves when they're proved right, or when we think of our own flaws once the die is cast and we mock the right camp.

In short, if men and women of physics mock any of the sciences, it's their own area of expertise. That's because we know the most about it, and we don't discriminate. Sure, we tease engineers and geologists, but we don't bully them. If anything, we just have a dignified and enormous sense of humor.

The mainstream media has created a mad scientist trend that fits scientists in general. Some of us are proud to have this burden on our backs, but some of us are sick to the soul of it.

Those in physics of the latter ideology take it out on computer scientists and engineers. The properties of an awkward nerd are made extreme in their case as well. We're glad, for the most part, to have the same burden upon us, but we're not radical about it, nor do we exhibit that. Those who have degrees in computing do.

We also make fun of them because their bosses and the government think they spend eighteen hours a day tapping on keyboards or into a hottie's Twitter account, playing video games, ranting about Batman in their fifties, and speaking Python more fluently than English. In reality, they're working, but they have no clue why things work, and they make most things work by turning them off and on again.

Engineering is an applied form of physics, which some might say involves making knick-knacks from long-understood scientific ideas. One reason we joke about it is because of the key differences.

There's a lot of talk about how engineers are more concerned with the everyday uses of physics and their sustainability, which diverges from a pioneering scientific focus. Since this is what they actively say is important and enjoyable, a humorous physicist might call them boring and prosaic. As stated on a shirt I've seen, engineers are not boring people. They just get excited over boring things!

Second, there's the stereotype that engineers are meant to work for physicists. In some cases, it's the other way around. While engineering essentially involves building stuff, as my friend in aeronautics puts it when trying to convert me to his subject, the underlying dynamics must be understood and widely accepted by higher research, i.e., physics research, before being deemed appropriate for invention designs. With that in mind, engineering is the designing process, and those who organize it must understand a different scope of dynamics. They are just as contemporary and intelligent as the community behind developing the underlying theory.

Third, engineering involves constructing cars, houses, nuclear reactors, etc. They get mocked for getting excited over arbitrary and pedestrian details. But the emphasis here is on the commonplace careers that derive from their skills, diverging from research areas. I call this third point a cliché since engineering firms are often situated at universities and involved in research themselves. However, there are still those Bob-the-Builder types with boring jobs that we joke about. Engineers are the butt of jokes because many insist this is how they end up.

In conclusion, engineers are primarily teased for being the working-class children of physics, or as aptly put in the Big Bang Theory, the Oompa-Loompas of... more

Science and philosophy are, of course, very closely linked, but in their big questions, the former asks how, and the latter asks why. It means that there are some ideas of one which can agree with the other, and others which cannot.

We all know the big science versus religion debates, but it goes further than that, such as questioning whether mathematics, the language of physics, even exists. It is a never-ending inequality of ideas, as anyone who's been in a religion fight (basically anyone) will know. This allows each side to put a lot of energy into their insults and talk in a way to make everyday things, such as buying groceries, sound as profound as humanly achievable.

Physics underpins astrophysics, the study of stellar objects, and cosmology, the study of the origins and evolution of the universe. It loosely links to the documentation of where everything is in the sky, which we call astronomy.

Astronomy is assisted by applications of physics, and vice versa. However, there are astronomers with the responsibility of looking up at asteroids in close proximity, seeing the same thing every day, or being fascinated by the idea of rocks in space.

Of course, astrophysics and cosmology would fail without the radio telescopes that detected the cosmic microwave background that astronomy provided, so the mocking of astronomy is highly controversial among humorous physicists. It can break the ice but also some relationships.

Just as chemistry is applied physics, the life sciences are applied physics and chemistry! It's also by far the least mathematical of the sciences unless you count biophysics. Areas such as medicine would struggle without an understanding of radioactivity and fluid mechanics. Some of the most important theories of fluid dynamics explained properties of blood flow that had puzzled anatomists and physicians. Anyone who has worked professionally on understanding the functions of the circulatory system knows this. Thus, biology is mocked for being an even more obscure physics application than chemistry.

However, this mocking happens less frequently. Physics and biology are working together to scientifically define life and consciousness. Biologists are not as sensitive and defensive as chemists. In fact, many develop a dark personality from focusing on bacterial diseases, predatory instincts, and genetic disorders. Moreover, important theories in biology, such as Darwin's theory of evolution, are often questioned in the name of religion, which sets us all on edge.