Before Gravity Was Discovered

The circular definition of a tensor might be the most expensive knowledge that physics student ever acquired! $200,000 in tuition to learn "a tensor is something that transforms like a tensor" is peak academic comedy. It's like defining water as "the wet stuff that makes things wet." The duck analogy is brilliant though—sometimes in mathematics and physics, we define things by their properties rather than what they intrinsically are. Next time someone asks me to explain eigenvalues, I'll just say "they're the values that eigen." That'll be $50,000, please.

Physics textbooks: bringing students to tears since forever. But the real MVP here is Roger Freedman, co-author of that infamous torture device disguised as educational material, who's out here turning Twitter into his personal office hours. When someone uses his physics textbook to press tofu (the ultimate academic dishonor), Freedman doesn't get mad—he gets technical. "Actually, you're applying a normal force (Chapter 4) and increasing bulk stress (Chapter 11)." That's not just a comeback, that's a full academic citation in the wild! This is what happens when physicists use social media. They can't help themselves. Everything is a teaching moment, even your dinner prep.

Electrical Engineering students know the true horror of circuit analysis. When your professor casually asks you to "just apply Kirchhoff's Law" and then presents you with what appears to be a summoning circle for the ancient god of tangled wires and burnt resistors. Nothing says "I've made a terrible career choice" quite like staring at mystical runes when you expected a simple RLC circuit. At this point, you're not solving for voltage—you're solving for which demon to sacrifice your GPA to.

Behold the ultimate mathematical troll job! This "proof" starts with a clearly false premise and then uses seemingly legit algebra to reach the absurd conclusion that 1 is the largest natural number. It's basically what happens when mathematicians drink coffee at 2 AM and decide to mess with freshmen. The sneaky flaw? Assuming "n is the largest natural number" when natural numbers are literally infinite. From there, the algebra actually checks out! This is like claiming you're the tallest person alive, then using your height measurements to "prove" nobody can be taller than 5'2". This is exactly why mathematicians trust nothing and verify everything. Trust issues? Nah, just good practice!

When your professor asks which "moment" you're referring to in your physics paper and you realize there are approximately 8 billion different types. The struggle is real! Physics students drowning in a sea of moments—torque, inertia, momentum, magnetic, electric, seismic—while desperately trying to remember which one they actually need for their problem set. Meanwhile, their professor is just sitting there enjoying the existential crisis unfold. Classic physics department trauma.

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.