Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis for January 06, 2024

They do have to go teach their classes and go to Sweden to pick up the Nobel Prize.

Physics courses in high school were more fun…. they were taught without the calculus.

The uninterested object has encountered the resistible force.

But what about the pie?

the professor heard Pi and looked around for anything labeled 3.14159265358979

And never go to islands too eh Rat.

I was preparing myself for another rancid pun. Happy to be disappointed.

Thanks to “the big bang theory,” I think Sheldon Lee cooper, PHD, SC.D, would AGREE with RAT’S sentiment, statement, and general attitude from this specific comic strip for today, blah, blah, blah….dan aka the WORST human being in recorded history, and THAT includes HITLER, but not his cool nephew, or his nephew’s children, who, as children, decided to remain celibate, so as to KILL the HITLER name!!!!

The physics professor may be a good teacher, but he is a bad listener. Rat explicitly said „whatever“ floats your boat – nothing about water. Rat’s boat would float on beer probably, Scrooge Duck’s boat might float on cold coins, while Goat’s boat is floating on herbal tea I assume.

He must have learned from Mr. Spock or Commander Data

Physics, even spelled backwards, is beyond me.

What if the boat is in gravy? How does it float?

Rat should have said “Whatever spins your prop”!

He wanted PI

It’s a figure of speech, Professor.

My boat and rubber ducky float in my bathtub, you just have to be careful where you sit.

Shall we discuss Bernoulli…..

Pee can float your boat.

Just don’t play pool with one.

Prof was wrong anyway. The boat floats at the point the forces are equal, be it gravy, tea, or any othe liquid.

I agree with Rat…they should never leave home, but if he’s willing to buy the next round, I’m good with that.

Taking sayings literally can be so much fun.

I liked physics in high school.

I thought the last panel was going to be Rat pounding the professor with a baseball bat.

I like to say Whatever flips your waffle instead. It doesn’t make sense, so it makes perfect sense.

I don’t think anyone who met Richard Feynman would say that.

Granted, he was one of a kind.

which is to say -If the object displaces more fluid than its own weight, it will experience a net upward force, causing it to float. This principle is known as Archimedes’ principle, which explains why objects float or sink in fluids based on their density relative to the density of the fluid.

I wonder about all these people saying the professor asked them to leave and not come back. I have never heard of that happening except on Young Sheldon – the TV show. I call Barbara Streisand on all of them.

Where was Al when the Titanic went down? ☹️☹️

Gravity is not a force …

How about “whatever irritates your rat”? Which with this rat, is just about anything.

OK, IM FINE WHEN YOU MAKE FUN OF CYCLISTS AND STUFF, BUT PROFESSERS???? TOO FAR >:(

Where’d he go?

Good to know.

i’m sorry, things with you people just don’t add up

Goat should’ve introduced him right away as “Al, the autistic physics professor”. Mind you, many autistic people would be fine with the metaphor

Should have said “Whatever tickles your fancy.”

Discuss how high air pressure in the car pushes cigarette smoke out the window instead of it being sucked outside

A lot of people should never leave home for different reasons.

Physics rocks!!

Sheldon?

I rarely do leave home, but I might for world-famous pecan pie.

Next time, get a math professor. 100% of the time.

Oh, thank goodness. I was bracing for a pun…

Physicsian heal thyself!

I like to float my boat in Champagne.

Mercury floats a boat really well.

“equal to” not “less than”.

Sorry. It’s a compulsion. ¯\(ツ)/¯

…and accountants

Eureka! He has found it!

Perhaps physics professors should stay home, but cartoonists should definitely avoid making themselves look like fools when they try to sound like they know something about physics. All objects are subjected to the same gravitational pull. The difference is how much water an object displaces. A solid ball of steel sinks. The same steel made into a boat shape, so that it displaces enough water, floats. There’s no difference in the gravitational pull.

PhDs like that are just twits. Too arrogant for their own good. Let’s see them deal with problems needing common sense, such as “Hmmm…I poured water into the coffee maker, it’s plugged in, but why isn’t it making coffee? OH!! The machine is broken! We need to spend another $300 and buy a new one!!”

I never met a physicist I could like…..even the one I dated (briefly) in college.

A comic strip no one reads anymore suggested the same thing about engineers.

If the pecan pie is so great, how come coffee and tea are the only things they ever order there.

He’s not wrong, just pedantic.

Kinda right.The boat doesn’t have gravitational force, the earth does.The boat has mass the earth pulls toward its center.The Water has mass as well.The boat floats when the mass of water it displaces is equal to the mass of the boat. This means the part of the boat in the water below the waterline has to be designed to displace a volume of water that weighs the same as the boat.Now consider an aircraft carrier. The Weight of the water displaces by the ships hull in the water is equal to the weight of the whole carrier and every thing in it. That is why ships have bilge tanks to fill with water to adjust their depth when loaded/unloaded, so they will weigh more, and so the ship will have weight down low, and not tip over..

I’ll echo Rat by saying there’s too many physics professors out there.

Well Rat, you might get rid of the professor, but physics will always be everywhere you go.

When I was in highschool my family (my sister, my mother, and I) would have a local radio station playing in the background while we ate breakfast. One morning the radio announcer had a riddle with a prize. There’s a ship in the harbor, a ladder is over the side of the ship and each rung of the ladder is spaced 1 foot apart and 2 rungs are under water. The tide comes in and raises 2 feet, how many rungs are under water. My mom and sister looked at each other and said, “that’s easy 4.” Without looking up from my breakfast I said no, it’s 2. What do you mean it’s 2? The ship rises with the tide. The next thing I knew my mom had dialed the radio station and handed me the handset. Unfortunately I wasn’t the first one to call in with the right answer so we didn’t win the prize.

My first thought was Neil deGrasse Tyson.

Maybe he would have understood Rat if he has said “Whatever makes you tumescent”

The boat is a determining factor. The fluid can be anything that meets or exceeds the boat’s minimum requirement.

I was expecting a pun setup. But a physics-based critique of an idiom was okay too.

Are you sure he’s not a math professor? The science professors I’ve known have been cards, but when it comes to math…

Physics as fun is ok, but true knowledge of physics requires calculus and beyond.

I never really understood what math really was until I took group theory and then ring theory, blew my mind!

Eureka!

A is one of the more boring physics professors. Most I’ve known or met are not so boring….

Don’t be so danged literal!

I’ll bet this started as a pun, but he couldn’t make it work! No other reason for the other details in the opening pane.