The True Definition Of 'Et Al.'

When your entire engineering degree consisted of watching pixelated YouTube tutorials and frantically Googling "how to calculate beam stress" at 2 AM. These poor souls are holding the blueprints upside down and backward, which is pretty much how we all felt trying to learn AutoCAD through a 13-inch laptop screen while the professor's Wi-Fi kept cutting out. The structural integrity of their education is about as sound as a bridge built with popsicle sticks and optimism.

Chemistry grad students looking at an IR spectrum with mysterious peaks be like... "WHO ARE THESE FUNCTIONAL GROUPS AND WHY ARE THEY IN MY SAMPLE?!" Nothing strikes fear into the heart of an organic chemist quite like unexpected absorption bands crashing your otherwise pristine spectral data. That mysterious peak at 1720 cm -1 ? Could be anything from accidental acetone contamination to your research career going up in flames. 30 years in the lab and I still get cold sweats when I see unidentified signals in my spectra.

Integration constants (+C) are the calculus equivalent of that one friend who shows up uninvited to every party. The meme captures the universal experience of students forgetting to add the mysterious "+C" when solving indefinite integrals, only to have their teacher call them out with the mathematical equivalent of disappointment. That blackboard full of equations is just there to remind you that no matter how complex your solution is, forgetting that tiny symbol will cost you points. The integration constant isn't just a mathematical necessity—it's the teacher's favorite gotcha moment.

The scientific publishing paradox strikes again! That moment when you realize your groundbreaking research costs YOU money to publish while romance novelists get paid for their steamy scenes. Scientists out here paying thousands to share discoveries that could save humanity while "50 Shades of Mitochondria" would earn royalties! The academic world's backwards economics would make even Einstein scratch his head. Next time you discover a new particle, maybe just add some forbidden love between electrons and call it fiction instead!

The eternal STEM rivalry continues! This meme brilliantly captures the hierarchy that secretly exists in science fields. The engineer gets silenced while the physicist gets to speak - a perfect representation of how theoretical physicists think they're the intellectual elite of STEM. It's that moment in every interdisciplinary meeting when the physicist starts explaining why their equations are more fundamental than your actual working prototype. Meanwhile, mathematicians are probably off-screen wondering why anyone bothers with real-world applications at all.

The left book represents actual calculus—thick, comprehensive, and full of complex integration rules. The right book? That's "calculus if" the integral of a product equaled the product of integrals. The equation shown (∫f(x)*g(x)dx = ∫f(x)dx * ∫g(x)dx) is hilariously wrong and would collapse most of mathematics if true. It's the mathematical equivalent of saying "what if gravity was optional?" The thin book perfectly captures how much simpler—and utterly broken—calculus would be if this mathematical crime were allowed. Every calculus student's forbidden dream!