Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

Engineering

2021-06-03 View on smbc-comics.com → 1 revision
Engineering
Votey panel for Engineering
This explanation is incomplete or may contain errors. It was generated by AI and has not yet been reviewed by a human editor.

Explanation

This comic applies different engineering disciplines to the problem of child-rearing, treating a baby's behavior as a technical challenge to be solved with each field's characteristic approach.

The title is "Approaches to Childrearing by Engineering Discipline," and each panel represents a different branch:

Chemical Engineering suggests situating the child in an edible, non-Newtonian fluid so it can redirect its motion while the whole production process runs on its own -- treating the baby like a manufacturing process to be optimized with clever material science.

Mechanical Engineering proposes duct-taping babies together, noting that duct-taping fewer than two babies beyond ten minutes requires no additional effort -- a parody of how mechanical engineers solve everything with brute-force physical attachment.

Electrical Engineering suggests magnetically harnessing all baby motion to spin generators, thereby reducing the electric bill -- viewing the baby purely as an untapped energy source.

Aerospace Engineering proposes a baby cannon designed to give the projectile "improved stall safety characteristics" -- the absurdity of treating a baby as something to be launched.

Biomedical Engineering proposes "believing a baby is dead at 10 and harvesting the organs," noting this "may be controversial among household bioethicists" -- a dark joke about biomedical engineering's clinical detachment.

Civil Engineering closes with: "Look, the sanitation system is brain-dead simple. Use time to do a clean design on these things" -- treating childrearing as an infrastructure project.

The humor throughout comes from the mismatch between the warmth and chaos of raising a baby and the cold, systematic problem-solving approach of each engineering discipline.

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