2014-10-29
Explanation
The Joke
A woman asks her physicist friend to explain, in layman's terms, why bubbles in a soda go to the top, fall down, bounce exactly once, then rise again. The physicist starts to answer, "Well, it's obvious that..." then pauses, says "huh," and sits down at a computer saying "gimme a sec." After extensive research, the physicist announces, "Bubbles don't actually do that, do they?" The woman gleefully responds, "Are you lost six months of life!"
The Humor
The comic satirizes how easily a physicist (or any expert) can be nerd-sniped -- tricked into obsessively researching a problem by having it framed as though it is a real phenomenon that needs explaining. The woman fabricated a completely false observation about bubble behavior, and the physicist, instead of immediately questioning the premise, spent six months trying to find the physical explanation for something that does not happen. The humor lies in the physicist's professional pride preventing them from simply saying "that doesn't sound right" -- they assumed there must be an explanation and went down a rabbit hole. It is a joke about how experts can be exploited by their own curiosity and their reluctance to admit ignorance.