Frictionless Memes

Engineers getting all high and mighty about practical constraints while physicists are over here like "hold my spherical cow in a vacuum." The ultimate flex in physics isn't solving the problem—it's simplifying reality until the math works out! Nothing says "I'm too powerful for your real-world limitations" like casually erasing friction, air resistance, and the inconvenient shape of literally everything. Next time an engineer gives you grief about assumptions, just whisper "assume spherical rectangle" and watch their soul leave their body.

The eternal quest to find real-world examples of those perfectly frictionless pulleys from physics textbooks has finally ended! Every physics student has solved countless problems with ideal pulleys that have zero friction, zero mass, and inextensible strings—objects that supposedly don't exist in nature. Yet here they are, hanging on power lines like mythical creatures spotted in the wild! Next thing you know, someone will find a cow that's actually a perfect sphere...

Physics folks have the most fascinating double standard! They'll happily simplify a complex farm animal into a perfect sphere with zero friction when solving problems (because who needs reality?), but heaven forbid you mix up speed and velocity at a party! 😱 The frictionless cow in vacuum is a classic physics simplification trope - making ridiculous assumptions to make math easier. But mention that you went "really fast" instead of specifying your directional velocity, and suddenly they're foaming at the mouth about vector quantities! This selective rage is basically the unwritten law of physics discussions. Oversimplify the entire universe? Brilliant! Use casual language about motion? Scientific blasphemy!

The infamous "assume a frictionless surface" strikes again! Physics textbooks love creating these bizarrely simplified scenarios where basic laws of nature just... don't apply. Sure, let's ignore air resistance, friction, and apparently gravity's selective application while we're at it. The person in the cart gets normal physics, but the poor soul hanging below? Nope, they're just dangling in theoretical physics purgatory. This is exactly why students think physics is disconnected from reality. Next problem: "Calculate the velocity of this wagon assuming the pool is filled with inviscid fluid and the child is a perfect sphere."