physicists

Today's xkcd reminds me of a story I heard back in high school, about a physics grad student who forgot to file his paperwork for a summer research project and ended up having to work at a dairy trying to improve their processes - not really his thing, but all the school could find for him at the tag end of May. So he spent the summer wandering around the farm with his notebook and slide rule (yes, it was that long ago that I was in high school) and at the end of the summer he told the somewhat skeptical farmer that he was ready to talk to them all about his findings. So the dairy farmer assembled everyone - the cattlemen, the milkers, the guys who wrestled the big cans on and off the trucks, the drivers, the people who cleaned and sterilized the cans and other equipment, even the two kids who kept everything hosed down. They all gathered in the milking shed, standing around, hands in their overalls, jeans, or work-coat pockets depending, and watched as this gangly young physicist, wearing a white coat, strode up to the chalkboard he'd had erected at the front of the building. He picked up a piece of chalk and drew a circle on the board, then took a deep breath and faced the crowd. "First," he said, "imagine a spherical cow of constant density..."

Why, yes, we did tell jokes about physicists when I was growing up. That's what happens when you live in a company town, and the company is the Atomic Energy Commission...