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From cats to cars, films, and anthropology, these days there really isn’t a subject that doesn’t have a dedicated meme page or ten about it. Naturally, science and physics in particular are no exception. 

The “Physics Meme” Instagram page shares funny and brainy posts all about science, scientists, and their trials and tribulations. So get comfortable, break out your scientific calculator, and scroll through these memes. Be sure to upvote your favorites and comment your thoughts below. 

More info: Instagram

While most of the information in these sorts of meme pages is pretty lighthearted, created to evoke a chuckle or two from viewers, memes are also a great way to share some simple information in a way that is easy to process and retain. So if you want a quick refresher on some physics, internet posts can often do the job faster than your old notes from middle school. 

Of course, this sort of quick, humorous information often does cut corners to explain a concept here or there. So it can be worth quickly debunking some common misconceptions. First and foremost, an object's weight isn’t what makes it easy to push and pull, instead, it is inertia. In other words, massively heavy objects in space do still require some effort to move, despite their weightlessness. 

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Sergy Yeltsen
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11 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

And cats. But I think we all know cats are non-newtonian liquids. Goats... I don't know.

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In other words, in space, an object is weightless, yet it won’t feel as “light as a feather” (in Earth’s gravity). This caveat is really not important to remember for 99% of the population but given that a lot of physics research focuses on space, it still remains an important detail. And this way, you can claim that you simply have a lot of inertia, whenever you need an excuse for stubbornness. 

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SM
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11 months ago (edited) DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

The coloring is wrong. The US uses both. Now the fact that UK hassles the US over this (not acknowledging the fact that we use both) is 100% correct.

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And speaking of space, most of us probably have a very incorrect idea of how large, research telescopes function. While the hobbyist variants that we can buy in stores aren’t that different from the ones used by Galileo or Nicolaus Copernicus, the ones used by major space agencies actually rely on gathering very specific types of light and waves, like x-rays and radio waves. 

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me McG
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11 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

🎵"Well they'll stone you when you're trying to be so good; They'll stone you just like they said they would. They'll stone you when you're tryin' to go home; And they'll stone you when you're there all alone."🎶

stupidMonkey
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11 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Stone dispersed into sub atomic particles - Heat death of the universe

Michael Lovett
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11 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I have a friend who is a meteorologist in Honolulu. Outside there office window, they have a small version of that. I always joke with him "you went to university for this, yet you live in a place where the weather hardly changes: 'today the forecast is sunny." Go figure.

BagelBoi
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11 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

when my dad was growing up in the american south, he had this system outside a school nearby his house, but it was a stick rather than a rock

A Wild Bean (they/them/any)
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11 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I wanna steal the stone to trick people into thinking there was a tornado and they somehow didn’t notice

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Even our basic discussions of space much resemble the physics problems we had to solve in school. Ignore air resistance, was a classic, or the assertion that some action was happening in a vacuum. Similarly, we assume that, in space, we are weightless. However, even in space, there is still some gravitational pull. Not much on a lone astronaut, but on a planet, quite a bit more. 

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TotallyNOTAFox
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11 months ago (edited) DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Hiram Maxim can relate - he got send out of the way because Edison felt threatened by him. Being bored in Great Britain lead him to work on the first machine gun....

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Much of our interaction with space does come through sending people and bits of technology into orbit or even further. To do this, naturally, we need rockets. Rockets, as one might guess, are quite complicated. “It’s not rocket science!” one might exclaim about something relatively easy, unless, of course, it really is rocket science. 

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A common misconception about rockets is that rockets “push” their payload forward. Once you take into account the fact that they still work in space, where there is nothing to push off of, you realize that, actually, they simply move the object in the opposite direction of themselves. If that was confusing, don’t fret, it is, after all, actually rocket science

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Scott Rackley
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11 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Truth, he was Steve Jobs before Steve Jobs. Just hired smart people and stole from them legally, except Nikola. Who he tried to ruin through duplicity.

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nancy
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11 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

A good teacher will admit when they don't know everything, and if showing a youtube video helps clarify the concept, then it's the right thing to do.

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Wingsofwrath
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11 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

He's holding that RPG-7 wrong - it should be right hand on trigger and left pushing the grip into the shoulder to have the venturi nozzle as far from you as possible. Holding it like this will scorch his back and/or rupture his eardrums.

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The Idaho Potato
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11 months ago (edited) DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Assume a spherical cow with an organ density of ρ(r)=-cr^-1 that is emitting a magnetic field. Use Gauss's law to calculate the electric field outside the cow, inside the cow and on the surface of the cow. :D

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Eric Williams
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11 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

also... there are 10 kinds of people. those who understand binary and those who don't.

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Ace
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11 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

The whole point of explosives is that they contain everything needed to produce the bang. Would still work underwater, although it's not recommended.

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SM
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11 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Actually, this is only true in very specific cases. For instance, you have to be a sea level pressure.

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FaceTime Audio
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11 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I always check with a calculator, until it starts refusing to round square roots into decimals in favor of creating stacked fraction-root behemoths, and then I just throw the calculator across the room in rage.

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David Paterson
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11 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Twisted itself into a hypercube. Also known as a tesseract and as an 8-cell. Because the image above contains 8 cubes.

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Mark
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11 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

And it was in that moment that Newton realized that apples do not talk

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HelluvaHedgehogAlien
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11 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Pieces of toast always land butter side down. Cats always land on their feet. Therefore, tie toast to cat, drop from 1 meter, and observe infinite energy spin

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Mark
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11 months ago (edited) DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Noo, it’s a^2+2ab+b^2! On that note why does the addition sign look so weird?

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David Paterson
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11 months ago (edited) DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

REAL astronomers use parsecs. REAL astrophysicists use centimeters. Only plebs like me use light years.

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Stardust she/her
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11 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

We do write it as fraction depending upon the problem and whether or not it’s specified. The fraction is 22/7 which isn’t the exact value of Pi but it makes calculations easy at times

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David Paterson
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11 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I could probably makes sense of that. In Wheeler's units, mass and velocity have the same units. And in general relativity mass appears as a squared term so the sign isn't all that important.

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Alexandru Bucur
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11 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

In case you're confused, the one on the right is Astra Space's Rocket 3.3 serial number LV0006, launched on the 28 August 2021, which, because of an engine failure at launch drifted off the pad horizontally for several tens of meters until enough fuel had burned off to allow the thrust to finally overcome gravity and move the vehicle vertically. Since the trajectory was off-nominal, the rocket was remotely detonated by range safety at an altitude of 50km (31 mi) before crashing into the ocean downrange of the launch site. The next two rocket launches both reached orbit.

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The Idaho Potato
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11 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Or τ as backwards J, or Π as big N, or λ as upside-down y. Happens in my class all the time.

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