2013-02-14
Explanation
This comic is drawn on graph paper and presents a chart with two axes. The x-axis is labeled "Desire not to actually work on a physics problem" and the y-axis is labeled "Quality of diagram." The curve shows an exponential relationship: as the desire to avoid doing actual physics work increases, the quality and elaborateness of the diagrams produced skyrockets. At the low end of procrastination, there is a simple, bare-bones cylinder diagram with basic labels. As the curve rises, the diagrams become increasingly ornate, eventually featuring a detailed physics diagram with multiple coordinate axes and careful measurements. At the extreme end of procrastination, the diagram has transformed into a full artistic illustration of a seaside scene with a sailing ship, along with a scroll containing a Tennyson poem ("Break, break, break / On the cold gray stones, O Sea!").
The joke captures a universal experience among students and academics: the phenomenon of "productive procrastination," where someone avoids their actual assignment by pouring enormous effort into tangential aspects of it. A physics student who doesn'''t want to solve a fluid dynamics problem will spend hours making the accompanying diagram beautiful, adding unnecessary artistic flourishes, and eventually producing work that has nothing to do with physics at all. The more they want to avoid the real work, the more creative energy they channel into everything except the problem itself.
The votey panel confirms the autobiographical nature of the joke, with a handwritten note reading: "This comic drawn while avoiding a simple fluid dynamics word problem. -ZW" -- signed by Zach Weinersmith himself, admitting that the comic is itself an act of procrastination from his own physics homework.