Science hierarchy Memes

The pandemic really humbled the physics community! While biologists and chemists were front and center battling COVID-19, developing vaccines and treatments, physicists were suddenly... not the heroes of the scientific narrative. For decades, physicists dominated scientific discourse with their grand unified theories and particle accelerators, often looking down on "softer" sciences. Then COVID hit, and suddenly those biochemistry classes everyone skipped became pretty darn important. Nothing like a global pandemic to make you realize that understanding proteins might be slightly more urgent than string theory. The physicists' collective "perhaps I treated you too harshly" is basically science's version of "sorry I was a jerk in high school, you're actually cool now."

Hard matter physicists turning down soft matter physics like it's a sketchy drug deal! The guy's rejecting that pink foam (probably some polymer or colloid) while keeping his precious crystals safe on a plate. The hierarchy in physics is real - crystallographers and quantum folks looking down on anyone studying squishy things. Meanwhile, soft matter physicists are over here making your shampoo work better and explaining why ketchup gets stuck in the bottle. But sure, keep your rigid lattices and pretend that's the only "real physics." 🙄