Entirely too weak for The Pit, but certainly mundane and pointless…
An old botany professor of mine from ages past coined the “bad physics” concept. Basically it is a way of blaming one’s clutziness on a mallicious set of imaginary principles. His approach to “bad physics” was that there are some days when you are just out of sync with the physical world, and you pretty much just have to accept those days, lock yourself in your office and make a point to avoid hot liquids, sharp objects, and operation of any lab equipment, vehicles, or heavy machinery.
A few specific and infuriating examples of “bad physics”:
Perforation malfunction - Particularly a problem with rolls of “cheap” paper towels and toilet paper (such as those used in my office building) where the product rips absolutely everywhere but where it was designed to.
Fickle friction - When an object seems hell bent on sliding frictionlessly in the direction that is most undesireable and potentionally destructive to either the object itself or to you in general, while all attempts to alter the object’s course are met with virtually willfull and insurmountable frictional forces motivated to maintain the destructive trajectory. This seems to be commonly experienced in the empty passenger seats of moving vehicles, though there are many many…many…subsets of this phenomenon.
Randomly-Shifting Center of Gravity Syndrome (RSCGS): When carrying, moving or otherwise applying a force to any object or group of objects, its center of gravity will randomly fluctuate, often causing the object to fall, spill or otherwise become damaged or destroyed. Note: This effect is exacerbated for large or unweildy objects.
Impact-induced superfluidity: When you bump your coffee mug with your elbow, the molecules of the liquid within can be jostled into a brief superfluidic state, so that the liquid crawls rapid up the side of the mug and slops all over your desk, your keyboard, and that paper from Phys. Rev. you were pretending to read. Although the pheonomenon of normal superfluidity is most commonly observed in fluids that are very cold, impact-induced superfluidity is more likely in hotter liquids.
The gravitic least-time principle: While according to classical physics, objects on a perfectly horizontal surface have no way of “knowing” where the edge is, according to the gravitic least-time principle, all objects are experiencing every possible path they might take toward the floor at all times, and are predisposed to take the shortest path. I.e. whenever an object experiences a small displacement due to a subtle vibration, a nudge, or strong draft, it will preferentially move away from the center of whatever surface it is on, and thus will tend to migrate by impreceptible steps toward the edge until finally it is knocked off. The most spectacular demonstrations of this principle are provided by objects that are fragile, vessels filled with liquid, and my tea filter, especially when it is filled with soggy tea leaves.
Mundane Time Dilation: When engaged in a particularly boring task time will stand still or at least slow significantly. Conversely time will greatly accelerate as a deadline approaches, particularly if you have forgotten about said deadline.
I’m am currently trapped in the eye of a related paradox. The end of the day deadline for the report spreadsheet I’m working on speeds towards me at a dizzying speed, while the time spent doing the absolutely mind-numbingly tedious calculations to finish the report seems…to…sloooooow…tooooooooooooo…aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa…crrraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaawwwwwwwwwwwwl…
Chicken Bones are Good Juju - The cause of the worst casualties associated with the power plant aboard the USS Vriginia CGN38 were caused, not by operator error, mechanical failure, nor even adverse sea conditions - but because the LPO for the Reactor Controls division thought that the chicken bones kept in the RPCP (Reactor Plant Control Panel) were simply a bad joke.
We ended up with three reactor scrams within a 24 hour period after that. One of which took down the other plant as well. :eek:
My advisor is surrounded by a field of extreme warped spacetime. Any meeting with him, even if he swears up-and-down it will only take a half hour, will not be over for at least an hour and a half, as measured in the terrestrial frame.
And once he declares the meeting over, I have to reach escape velocity . . .
Schrodinger’s quarter: When depositing coins into the soda machine, the last coin deposited will be suspended simultaneously in two distinct states, it will both exist and not exist. You will therefore not be getting your soda. Informing maintenance of this situation will resolve the paradox – when you go to get the maintenance man one of two things will happen; someone will wander by and randomly push one of the buttons and get your soda, or when you return with the maintenance person he will open the machine, the waveform will collapse, and the coin in question will cease to exist. Both of these possibilities will result in the maintenance man questioning whether you actually put the required money in the machine and further suggesting you are trying to cheat him.
The ensuing half-hour argument will cause you to completely forget the fact that the report you were working on is now due in 5 minutes (see Mundane Time Dilation)
Random Chunks of Gravity: I know this occurs when I feel like my personal gravity field has suddenly increased to the point where I can barely move. If I get up and walk around, it feels as though the very air has attained the viscosity of Jell-O. My personal belief is that someone has extra gravity they got from somewhere, and they’re dropping random chunks of it on humans to see what happens.
I - There is a directly proportional relationship between the magnitude of slippage of your sunglasses off of your nose, and the magnitude of how tangled the nose pads get in your hair when you push them up and out of your face.
II - The structure of the nose pad supports allows for the nose pads to be moved only further apart. Any attempt to decrease the slippage from Principle I by decreasing the gap between the nosepads is in conflict with Principle II and will result in at least one (if not both) of the nose pads breaking off.
When a hard object meets a soft substance, the soft substance will erode the hard object at an accelerated rate, oftentimes instantaneously. In field studies, this principle has proven that teeth (hard objects) can be eroded to tiny bits instantaneously by soft substances like pudding, applesauce, and cream cheese.
Sunglasses Principle III:
The price of your sunglasses is inversely proportional to how quickly you’re going to lose them.
Ratios of Coffitude:
It is physically impossible to receive a cup of coffee that is all of the following:
a) the proper temperature
b) sweet enough
c) light enough
d) big enough.
But what is an achievable congruence of those criteria? Can one have a cup meets three of your four criteria? Or only two? Not being a coffee drinker, my interest is sole academic, but still I wonder how close to ideal one can come.
It is possible to achieve three out of four of the aforementioned qualities, but that complete satisfaction that comes from the absolutely perfect cup of coffee comes but once in a lifetime.
Is that more like an uncertanty principal. Not only all four cannot be perfect at once. If three of four are perfect the fourth must be infinitely wrong at that point. So a very large, perfectly light and sweet coffee would by necessity be at either 0 Kelvin or a super heated plasma. Also due to the Schrodinger cat effect, you can in no way measure that temperature without actually tasting the coffee since without observation it would be in a indeterminate quantum state of both zero and infinite temperature.
Is that more like an uncertanty principal. Not only all four cannot be perfect at once. If three of four are perfect the fourth must be infinitely wrong at that point. So a very large, perfectly light and sweet coffee would by necessity be at either 0 Kelvin or a super heated plasma. Also due to the Schrodinger cat effect, you can in no way measure that temperature without actually tasting the coffee since without observation it would be in a indeterminate quantum state of both zero and infinite temperature.
