895: Teaching Physics

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
Revision as of 00:15, 31 October 2012 by 203.104.11.2 (talk) (Added explanation, title text stumps me though)
(diff) ← Older revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)
Jump to: navigation, search
Teaching Physics
"Space-time is like some simple and familiar system which is both intuitively understandable and precisely analogous, and if I were Richard Feynman I'd be able to come up with it."
[Click comic to enlarge]
Title text: "Space-time is like some simple and familiar system which is both intuitively understandable and precisely analogous, and if I were Richard Feynman I'd be able to come up with it."

Explanation

The comic makes fun at the idea that physics is only interesting because teachers use interesting analogues, despite the fact they are over-simplified and don't help when more complex theory is taught. The comic refers to the classic "Ball on a rubber sheet" metaphor as a way to explain gravity in space-time, even though the metaphor breaks when trying to explain what causes gravity. The fourth panel highlights this with the statement that space-time is a set of equations, for which no analogy can fully explain.