@xkcdexplained The Big Caption

Toby, Dave & Ian Explain XKCD

There is a graph. On the X axis is sex, on the Y is computer.

November 30, 2009 at 1:44pm
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A man wakes up confused in a room with a laptop. Following a loud, wind-like sound the man loses the ability to speak which causes him to panic even further. We then see him run in-place and fall over. The camera then pans out, revealing two characters on the outside of a chamber that is holding the panicking man. It is then revealed that the man inside the chamber is a physics professor, and the two other characters had put him in a frictionless vacuum to see how he would work.
The joke here is that physics professors very commonly use a “frictionless vacuum” as the environment for problems and experiments given to their students. This is done to greatly simplify the work needed to solve the problem, as one can ignore the forces of friction and air resistance.
It’s also funny that they murdered a person.

A man wakes up confused in a room with a laptop. Following a loud, wind-like sound the man loses the ability to speak which causes him to panic even further. We then see him run in-place and fall over. The camera then pans out, revealing two characters on the outside of a chamber that is holding the panicking man. It is then revealed that the man inside the chamber is a physics professor, and the two other characters had put him in a frictionless vacuum to see how he would work.

The joke here is that physics professors very commonly use a “frictionless vacuum” as the environment for problems and experiments given to their students. This is done to greatly simplify the work needed to solve the problem, as one can ignore the forces of friction and air resistance.

It’s also funny that they murdered a person.

Notes

  1. xkcdexplainedexplainedexplained reblogged this from xkcdexplainedexplained and added:
    This is entirely correct. Well, apart from the “unusually funny” bit, as I found this one to fall flat. This author...
  2. xkcdexplainedexplained reblogged this from xkcdexplained and added:
    this explanation presumably shares some of XKCD guy’s enmity toward...affection for...
  3. obkb reblogged this from xkcdexplained
  4. xkcdexplained posted this