The Philosophical Panic Button

The four phases of water? Boring. But aqueous water ? Now that's where chemistry gets ridiculous. H 2 O(aq) literally means "water dissolved in water" - it's like saying "wet wetness" or "liquid liquidness." First-year chem students everywhere are having existential crises over this redundant notation. It's the chemical equivalent of saying ATM machine or PIN number. The face in the last panel perfectly captures that moment when you realize your professor wasn't joking about "aqueous water" being a legitimate term in your textbook. Chemistry: where we make simple things needlessly confusing since 1754.

This meme cuts deeper than a precision scalpel. Thalidomide, the notorious pharmaceutical from the 1950s, had two mirror-image forms (enantiomers) due to chirality. One form was a helpful sedative, the other caused severe birth defects. The drug's molecular structure literally said "I am aware of the effect I have on women" in the most tragic way possible. Chemistry's darkest "hold my beer" moment that revolutionized drug safety testing forever.

The mathematical plot thickens! Just when you're trying to master the Laplace transform (that nifty mathematical tool for solving differential equations), you discover the historical bamboozle of the century. Despite being named after Pierre-Simon Laplace, it was actually Leonhard Euler who first investigated these integrals in 1744. The shocked cat perfectly embodies that moment of mathematical betrayal when you realize Euler is basically the uncredited ghostwriter of calculus. Classic Euler, showing up everywhere in mathematics like that one friend who somehow appears in everyone's wedding photos.

The mathematical torus is having an existential crisis! While it's a superstar in topology (the branch of math studying shapes that remain unchanged under stretching and bending), it can't help comparing itself to its tastier look-alikes. Poor torus—geometrically fascinating with its donut shape and one hole, yet forever walking past regular donuts and bagels with food envy! In topology, a torus is basically a surface with one hole—like a donut where mathematicians care about its hole properties, not its deliciousness properties. The ultimate shape-identity crisis!

The eternal battle between chemists and mathematicians in one beautiful image! To a mathematician, "H-O=H" is just a simple equation where O cancels out. But to a chemist? That's water minus oxygen, which leaves you with explosive hydrogen gas! No wonder the chemist looks like they've seen some lab accidents while the mathematician remains blissfully clueless. Next time your math friend says "it's just algebra," remind them that in chemistry, incorrect equations don't just give you wrong answers—they give you explosions!

The eternal engineering mystery! Person 1 confesses they've been faking knowledge about engineering, while Person 2 reveals their dad—an actual engineer—just "goes to work and comes back." This perfectly captures the black box that is engineering to outsiders. Engineers apply complex principles to build everything from bridges to smartphones, yet somehow manage to describe their job as "I make things work." Meanwhile, the rest of us nod along, pretending we understand torque calculations and thermodynamic efficiencies. It's the ultimate professional smoke and mirrors—they could be building rockets or just playing with expensive LEGO sets all day. Who would know?