The Great Volcanic Cork Experiment

Ever wondered if you could taste science? This hilarious guide breaks down which scientific disciplines you should (or definitely should NOT) lick! Chemistry's emphatic "NO!!!!!" is spot on because, well, acids and bases aren't exactly tongue-friendly. Herpetology's "bad plan BAD PLAN" had me crying—imagine licking a venomous snake for science! 😂 The zoology entry flips the script brilliantly: "In zoology, science licks YOU." Meanwhile, epidemiology's desperate plea "FOR THE SAKE OF THE WORLD PLEASE DO NOT" feels especially relevant after recent years! Computer scientists apparently debug with their tongues—who knew that's what the 9V battery test was really training us for? My favorite might be geology's honest assessment: "Sometimes needed. Sometimes dangerous." Rock identification does occasionally involve the tongue test (for certain minerals), but licking uranium? Hard pass!

The ultimate geological romance! Carbon and diamond on a first date, exchanging the most scientifically accurate pickup lines ever. Carbon's "You look older than your profile picture" is a brilliant nod to radiocarbon dating, which measures age based on carbon-14 decay. Meanwhile, diamond's response about being "under a lot of pressure" perfectly captures how carbon transforms into diamond through extreme pressure deep within Earth's mantle. Their relationship literally took billions of years to develop! Scientists call this a perfect crystalline structure of humor.

The ultimate alchemist's dream! "Fe" is iron and "S" is sulfur on the periodic table, and when combined as FeS₂, you get pyrite—aka "fool's gold." It looks like gold but it's chemically worthless compared to actual gold. The stonks meme guy is basically saying "I've turned worthless elements into something that LOOKS valuable and tricked everyone!" It's medieval chemistry meets modern finance fraud! The perfect scheme until someone with basic mineral knowledge shows up to your gold rush and ruins everything with actual science.

Someone's confusing correlation with causation again. Holding a uranium-rich rock and subsequently feeling ill isn't a matter of personal opinion—it's just basic radiobiology. Next they'll be saying gravity is just a suggestion. The laws of physics don't require your agreement to function, much like how my experiments don't require my lab manager's approval to fail spectacularly.

Ever tried to research actual minerals only to be bombarded by cartoon characters? The struggle is REAL! 🔍 Here we have a serious phase diagram for MgO-Al₂O₃ spinel structure getting photobombed by Spinel from Steven Universe. It's like trying to study geology while your niece's favorite show crashes the party! Mineralogists and geochemists everywhere are having existential crises as their Google searches are forever contaminated by pink alien gem warriors. The academic world collides with pop culture in the most chaotic way possible—welcome to research in the digital age, where your scientific inquiry is one algorithm away from animated shenanigans!

Civil engineering students triumphantly holding up a jar of dirt for their senior project is the perfect distillation of engineering reality. While mechanical engineers build robots and computer scientists create algorithms, civil engineers are just ecstatic about finding the perfect soil sample. The Pirates of the Caribbean reference perfectly captures that mix of pride and absurdity when you've spent four years studying complex structural mechanics only to end up celebrating... dirt. But that dirt represents everything from foundation stability to soil liquefaction properties that could save lives during an earthquake. Still, nothing says "I've mastered engineering" quite like frantically waving sediment around!