Idealized models Memes

Welcome to the idealized world of physics problems, where bears perform perfect parabolic motion across canyons. In reality, that bear would've faceplanted halfway through. Nothing says "theoretical physics" quite like pretending the universe isn't constantly trying to slow everything down. Those perfect sine waves of motion exist only in the pristine environment of our textbooks and the dreams of first-year physics students who haven't yet been crushed by reality. The real world is just sitting there, friction and all, waiting to disappoint you.

The classic physics bait-and-switch. Spend your childhood being fed simplified models where "air resistance can be ignored" only to discover that real-world physics is a chaotic hellscape of drag coefficients and turbulent flow. No wonder he looks betrayed. Every scientist remembers that moment when they realized their textbooks were just feeding them approximations to keep the math manageable. Next they'll tell us spherical cows aren't actually a thing.