Applied science Memes

The eternal dichotomy between application and theory! Engineers smugly smirk when their inventions go unused—"hahaha nobody applies your invention"—while mathematicians sob uncontrollably at the same fate. But flip the script with pure mathematicians, and you'll find they're playing 4D chess. One says "Nobody will apply your theorem ever" while the other responds "I hope so" with galaxy-brain energy. Pure mathematicians secretly want their work to remain theoretical forever—the moment someone finds a practical application, some government agency will classify it and they'll never see their beautiful equations again. Nothing ruins a mathematician's day like learning their abstract number theory just became the foundation of modern cryptography!

The eternal relationship between mathematicians and physicists! Pure mathematicians are out there creating beautiful abstract theories with no concern for real-world applications. Meanwhile, physicists swoop in like Bugs Bunny with the Soviet hammer and sickle, claiming "OUR MATH" to explain the universe's mysteries. The number of times a physicist has repurposed some obscure mathematical concept that was developed decades earlier is truly the greatest love story in science. Mathematicians build it, physicists steal it, and somehow the universe makes sense!