Engineering Memes

Engineering: where theoretical physics goes to get its hands dirty and actually accomplish something useful. These memes celebrate the field where "close enough" can be mathematically quantified and duct tape is a legitimate solution in a pinch. If you've ever made something wonderfully elegant that looks like a complete mess, explained to non-engineers why their perpetual motion machine won't work, or felt the special satisfaction of a prototype that functions on the first try, you'll find your fellow problem solvers here. From the existential dread of error propagation to the joy of an elegant design, ScienceHumor.io's engineering collection honors the discipline that turns coffee into bridges, buildings, circuits, and software through the mysterious process of staying up all night with a calculator.

I Still Have Nightmares
Engineering Math Academia Science
1 hour ago 1.4K views 0 shares
I Still Have Nightmares
That innocent smile hides pure mathematical terror! Calc III is basically that "final boss" that shows up after you thought you'd already defeated calculus twice. It's like math saying "You thought derivatives were bad? Hold my vector field!" The way it surrounds you with Green's Theorem, curl, Laplacian, and all those partial derivatives is basically mathematical psychological warfare. Students enter thinking "I survived Calc I and II, how bad could it be?" and exit with thousand-yard stares and the ability to see in four dimensions. The only people who smile about Calc III are the ones who've developed Stockholm syndrome with multiple integrals!

Electrical Equation Hierarchy
Engineering Physics Science Academia
13 hours ago 11.8K views 0 shares
Electrical Equation Hierarchy
The guy on the left is busy memorizing Ohm's Law (V=IR) like a first-year physics student cramming for finals, while his neighbor is flexing with Coulomb's Law (F=ΦR) and that smug "I'm-in-advanced-electrodynamics" face. Classic physics hierarchy in action! The electrical engineering professor probably walks in later with Maxwell's equations tattooed on their forehead. Meanwhile, everyone's just trying to pass without their brain short-circuiting.

Highway To Nowhere: Engineering's Unfinished Symphony
Engineering Tech
14 hours ago 11.7K views 0 shares
Highway To Nowhere: Engineering's Unfinished Symphony
When civil engineers get asked to build a highway but forget to install the on-ramps! That elevated road is just vibing up there like "you can look but you can't touch." The structural integrity is impeccable, but the functionality? Not so much. It's basically the engineering equivalent of building a swimming pool without water. Somewhere, a transportation planner is having an existential crisis while staring at this masterpiece of infrastructure that connects nothing to nowhere. Engineering 101: Roads work better when vehicles can actually get on them!

When Safety Factors Meet Missiles
Engineering
1 day ago 15.6K views 0 shares
When Safety Factors Meet Missiles
Civil engineers: "We designed this bridge to withstand 120 mph winds, 8.0 earthquakes, and 100-year floods." Military engineers: "Cute. Watch this." That moment when you realize your structural calculations never included the "getting hit by a missile" variable. Turns out that fancy safety factor of 1.5 doesn't quite cover ballistic explosives. Back to the drawing board—if you can find it in the rubble.

The Fourier Transform Fanatic
Engineering Math Physics Science Research
1 day ago 15.7K views 0 shares
The Fourier Transform Fanatic
When someone suggests literally any problem-solving approach, mathematicians and physicists be like: "Nah, I'd Fourier transform." The escalating frustration of seeing every single type of Fourier transform listed is pure mathematical trauma in action. From waves to electromagnetics, quantum to spectral analysis—it's the mathematical equivalent of that friend who only knows one recipe but insists on cooking it six different ways. By the time we hit "Fourier FUCKING transform," you can practically feel the despair of someone who's spent too many sleepless nights converting between time and frequency domains. It's the universal hammer that makes everything look like a nail... a very complex, sinusoidal nail.

She Ain't The One (For Engineering)
Engineering Tech
1 day ago 11.4K views 0 shares
She Ain't The One (For Engineering)
Dating an engineer hits different! When she said she wanted to "try CNC," he thought she meant Computer Numerical Control machining—you know, those precision cutting robots that make parts with micron-level accuracy. Meanwhile, she was probably thinking of something... entirely different. This miscommunication is peak engineer brain—where technical acronyms trump all other interpretations. The look on her face when confronted with an actual CNC machine instead of whatever she was expecting is PRICELESS! Engineers everywhere are nodding knowingly while simultaneously googling what else CNC might stand for...

Weapon Of Mass Destruction
Engineering Physics Science
2 days ago 10.5K views 0 shares
Weapon Of Mass Destruction
Behold! The magnificent intersection of DIY engineering and Bernoulli's principle! Someone has created the ultimate plastic bottle air cannon—proving that physics homework can actually be weaponized! The beautiful chaos of compressed air propulsion in a humble soda bottle shows why engineers shouldn't be left unsupervised with basic household items. The pressure differential creates enough force to launch projectiles across rooms, terrorize cats, and annoy siblings with scientific precision. This is exactly why Newton's laws should come with a warning label!

Stretched To The Limit: Hooke's Law In Action
Engineering Physics Academia Science
2 days ago 7.2K views 0 shares
Stretched To The Limit: Hooke's Law In Action
The perfect physics pun doesn't exi— Engineering students studying Hooke's Law (F = -kx) are literally experiencing that the deformation is directly proportional to the applied stress! Their mental springs are stretched to the limit before finals. That wild-eyed, mouth-agape reaction is the universal response when someone unwittingly makes a physics pun while you're drowning in equations. Your brain instantly goes: "WAIT, I AM LITERALLY A SPRING UNDER STRESS RIGHT NOW." The more you study, the more distorted you become—it's basically experimental verification of the principle!

Nuclear Power: Just Spicy Rocks Boiling Water
Engineering Physics Tech Science
2 days ago 11.7K views 0 shares
Nuclear Power: Just Spicy Rocks Boiling Water
Nuclear power plants: where we split atoms to boil water because we're too sophisticated to just use a kettle. The meme nails it - abandoning nuclear energy after rare accidents is like prehistoric humans giving up fire because someone burned their cave. Sure, Chernobyl was bad, but so was that time your ancestors set their mammoth-skin tent ablaze. Nuclear fission generates 10 million times more energy than chemical reactions, yet we're still debating whether the "magic rocks" are worth it. Progress requires calculated risks, not knee-jerk reactions to isolated incidents.

Two Very Different Units
Engineering Physics Science
2 days ago 11.7K views 0 shares
Two Very Different Units
The beauty of scientific notation - same symbols, wildly different implications. To a mechanical engineer, "10 rad/s" is just a spinning thing. "Is my motor running at 10 radians per second? Cool, that's about 95 RPM." Meanwhile, nuclear engineers are having existential crises because 10 radiation units per second means either evacuate the building or update your will. One field worries about things going round, the other about things going boom. The duality of engineering - where identical notation can mean either "normal Tuesday" or "call the hazmat team."

The STEM Hierarchy Exposed
Engineering Math Physics Academia
2 days ago 12.1K views 0 shares
The STEM Hierarchy Exposed
The academic food chain in its natural habitat. Most majors see engineers as sophisticated professionals in lab coats making precise calculations. Meanwhile, math and physics majors know the truth - it's just Patrick Star with a hammer, blindly bashing away at problems until something works. Nothing captures the engineering methodology quite like "if I hit it hard enough, the numbers will eventually align." Pure mathematicians still haven't forgiven engineers for what they did to the Dirac delta function.

Draw And Label A Free Body Diagram For Full Points
Engineering Physics Science Academia
3 days ago 12.0K views 0 shares
Draw And Label A Free Body Diagram For Full Points
Whoever created this installation deserves an A+ in creative physics! It's the ultimate free body diagram prank—a table suspended by strings with buckets "resting" on it. The tension forces are actually holding everything up, completely flipping the expected force diagram. Every physics student who's ever struggled drawing arrows for tension, gravity, and normal forces is having flashbacks right now. Newton would either be impressed or facepalm so hard he'd discover a fourth law of motion! Fun fact: This setup is basically demonstrating Newton's Third Law in reverse psychology form. The buckets aren't supporting the table; they're being supported BY it while pretending to be the heroes!