2012-11-12
Explanation
This single-panel comic (with a caption below) shows a physicist describing a house fire in the most technically accurate but completely unhelpful way possible. The physicist explains: "Well, a small number of tiny things started vibrating a lot. Then they wobble some other things, which wobble a lot of other things, resulting in a significant increase in disorder." A distressed woman asks "What about the living things inside?" and the physicist coldly replies "That is a meaningless distinction." The caption reads: "Physicists make lousy firemen."
The humor comes from the physicist describing fire using fundamental physics concepts -- thermal energy as molecular vibration, heat transfer through conduction, and entropy ("increase in disorder") -- while being completely oblivious to the practical and human dimensions of the situation. From a strict physics perspective, there truly is no fundamental distinction between living and non-living matter; both are just arrangements of atoms. But this reductionist view is, of course, spectacularly unhelpful when people are trapped in a burning building. The comic satirizes the stereotype of the overly analytical scientist who cannot turn off their abstract thinking even in an emergency.
The votey panel doubles down on the physicist''s cold reductionism. When presumably asked about the fate of the people inside, the physicist cheerfully responds: "They''re fine. Just in a different chemical arrangement now" -- a darkly euphemistic way of saying they burned to death, since from a chemistry standpoint, the atoms are all still there, just rearranged.