No Answer Key For Real Life

Every biologist knows the existential truth: no matter what the problem is, Phosphate Buffered Saline (PBS) will somehow fix it. Left side: regular water. Right side: PBS, labeled "the cooler water." It's basically lab water with benefits — maintaining pH and osmotic balance while we frantically try to keep our cells alive. Grad students survive on coffee, cells survive on PBS. Coincidence? I think not. The ultimate lab flex is casually saying "just add PBS" to every protocol question without elaborating further.

Someone's clearly never had to identify an unknown compound from a mysteriously unlabeled bottle found in the back of the lab fridge from 1997! Sure, let me just "Google" this unidentified white powder. What could go wrong? Next they'll suggest we taste it to narrow down possibilities! Spectroscopy exists for a reason—because chemists trust labels about as much as we trust that "it'll only take 5 minutes" when setting up lab equipment. The face says it all: the beautiful pain of watching someone suggest the chemistry equivalent of "have you tried turning it off and on again?"

Organic chemists staring at two buttons: "Taste your product" or "Wait months until testing on mice is approved." Sweating intensifies. Safety protocols are just suggestions when you've spent six weeks synthesizing that novel compound. Who needs animal testing when you've got perfectly good taste buds that can also detect "notes of imminent organ failure"?

The face you make when someone starts treating science as "what exists" rather than "how we know what exists." Nothing triggers a philosophy of science researcher quite like watching someone confuse ontology (the study of what exists) with epistemology (how we gain knowledge). That cat's existential crisis is exactly how I look during interdepartmental meetings when someone says "science proves reality."

Nothing quite captures the modern scientific experience like spending your entire career meticulously collecting data, running statistical analyses, and surviving brutal peer reviews, only to have PatriotEagle1776 declare your life's work invalid because his cousin's Facebook post said otherwise. The real kicker? He probably thinks your graph needs more crossing lines to look "sciencey enough." Because apparently, decades of rigorous methodology can't compete with a 15-second video made by someone whose primary research credential is "doing their own research" while sitting on the toilet.

When computational chemists brag about Density Functional Theory (DFT) using electron density instead of wave functions, only to discover the dirty little secret—the density itself comes from wave functions! The cat's shocked expression perfectly captures that moment of existential crisis when you realize your entire PhD is built on a mathematical ouroboros. It's like claiming you don't eat animals while ordering a burger with extra cheese.