Troperville
Editing Help
Tools
Toys
|
alt title(s): Radicals Are Radical 
So you see, it's perfectly simple. Any questions, class?
As You Know, some cartoon writers didn't exactly do well in school. So, it seems that, with the passing of time, all their knowledge of math was condensed into a pile of information that they know pasted on every chalkboard in school scenes or written in class notes, regardless of the knowledge necessary to understand those equations.
For example, a fourth-grade class will sometimes have "pi" (π) written on the board, which would scare the students who should still be learning simple arithmetic. Other popular examples are integrals, and their well-known "large S" ( ∫ ) symbol. Very often, however, there won't be any variable of integration. Elementary algebra will be represented as something like "x + y = z", which is entirely meaningless without a description of what the variables represent or how they relate to each other.
Let's not forget about E=mc 2, the famous equation which has been degraded into nothing but a complex-looking decoration in everything from kids' cartoons to science shows. (E=mc 2 is actually Albert Einstein's formula for mass-energy equivalence ; far more people have heard of it than have any idea of what it actually means.) And then there's the big sigma (∑), the summation symbol. Nothing says smart like a giant sigma.
Trigonometric relations and the Pythagorean theorem are also popular. But don't ask to see words like "sine", "cosine", and "tangent". a^2 = b^2•c^2-2•b•c•cos(θ) you simpleton.
And math isn't the only subject that gets this treatment. Blackboards full of chemical formulae, sentence diagrams or plot/theme/character diagrams that stretch all over the whiteboard, or genealogies and timelines that look like a tangle of yarn are less common, but serve the same purpose.
This happens for three reasons: First, to ensure that there is some teaching going on, as the show itself thankfully never needs to show the actual classes. Second, to scare the young viewers into believing that they're going to see this stuff when they get older. Third, as a way of showing someone is really smart, often combining it with Room Full Of Crazy.
Examples:
open/close all folders
Anime and Manga
Comic Books
- In one Carl Barks comic book, the blackboard in a kindergarten classroom has a slightly illegible, possibly nonsensical mathematical expression written on it, including an integral sign (which, incidentally, does appear to have a variable of integration).
Fan Videos
- One segment for AMV Hell focused on a slow crawl across a blackboard covered with math equations in Neon Genesis Evangelion. Halfway through the piece,
a voice calls out we hear the Kevin Spacey in Superman Returns "WRONG!", and as the music rises in tempo, all the errors on the board are pointed out with red marker. It's at 43:28 in the AMV Hell 4.
- One of the problems is 9ab3x(-2/3*ab2)3 = 9abx(-8/27*a6*b3), when it should be 9ab3x(-8/27*a3*b6).
- Wouldn't it be much easier to simplify it, as (-8a4b9x)/3? Saves you a lot of writing.
- Nothing in Evangelion is simple.
Film
- The 2008 remake of The Day The Earth Stood Still includes a scene where Klaatu et al visit someone who won a Nobel Prize for his work on Biological Altruism. He has a blackboard covered in maths, which may or may not be correct (I'm not sure), including the words "Event Horizon". An event horizon is simply a boundary beyond which no events can be detected with the most commonly referenced one being that which marks the point of no return around a black hole. If there was ever a Biological singularity, (evolving into god?), the word could come into play. Also, it sounds dark and forboding.
- "Event horizon" is used as short hand to mean "point of no return" by some people. More likely they just copied the math from something that looks complex and there are few things that look more complicated than Relativity.
- In School of Rock, Jack Black's character writes E=mc2 on the board while pretending to teach the children something. Played with slightly in that he is totally clueless about teaching and this was presumably the only vaguely mathematical formula he could remember, and the school principal doesn't bat an eyelid when she walks into the room, even though the children are preteens.
- In Bedazzled, according to a blackboard in the background, a schoolteacher (Elizabeth Hurley) has assigned her students to prove Fermat's Last Theorem as homework. Of course, the schoolteacher was actually the devil and all of these scenes in-between wishes were of her intentionally screwing up the lives of other people.
Literature
- In the Sword Of The Galaxy book series, a simple algebraic expression can be used by the Trakkorians to enter hyperspace. When the author received complaints about this piece of Fridge Logic, he recited the MST 3 K Mantra.
Live Action TV
- The trope's name comes from a pastiche of E=mc2 that appeared in a scene of Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars where Harvey (who was named after Not So Imaginary Friend of the movie Harvey) writes "E = MC Hammer" on a blackboard of other nonsense.
- The same exact equation was said aloud by Dina on the Nickelodeon sitcom Salute Your Shorts, during a scene intended to make fun of the "growing and learning" activities going on during her camp experience.
- Especially funny in that Crichton, as a physicist and an astronaut, would know exactly what E=mc^2 actually means.
- In an episode of Torchwood, a integral equation was used to open the rift that led Jack and Tosh into the past. It didn't seem very realistic, though at least it had integration variables.
- This Troper wishes he could make rifts in the space-time continuum by doing calculus.
- The Doctor Who episode "The Impossible Planet" has Maxwell's equations of electric and magnetic fields as graffiti on a table in the cafeteria.
- In the pilot episode of Sliders, the main character leaves his blackboard covered in equations, not knowing what to write after the equals sign. When he comes back, his double has solved it, and the expression he has written as an infinity symbol on the denominator. That's right. He just needed to divide by infinity.
- To be fair, in Real Life quantum physics, renormalization (upon which quantum electrodynamics is built) is dependent on subtracting one infinity from another. And calculus frequently has operations with infinity.
- One of the clips in the Star Trek Enterprise opener shows a black and white image of a scientist writing complex equations across a blackboard. It looked very fancy until this troper's father pointed out the glaring mathematical error.
- In LOST Seasons 4 & 5 you get both Daniel Faraday (4) & his mother (5) just constantly writing jibberish on the chalkboard while conducting experiments. In Faraday's case, it could be justified in that his work was still in progress. But what about his mother? The Dharma initiative already had found the island... and the instrument for it's pinpointing on the map was already in place and working... so what equation was she still working on??
- You don't solve equations just for fun?
- A sketch in series 1 episode 3 of A Bit Of Fry And Laurie involves a "hilarious blooper" from a 1970s Open University programme, in which Hugh Laurie's presenter talks us through a blackboard full of nonsensical integral-like equations. What's more, the flub involves the equation giving a "resultant modular quantity" of 0.567395, rather than 0.567359 as Laurie's character states, when the integral in question has no limits and wouldn't have a numerical solution, not to mention that the programme appears to be a physics lecture about wave theory, which wouldn't involve numbers that precise as solutions anyway. ... Hmm, come to think of it, that's a hilarious blooper in itself! I don't believe it! Ha ha ha ha!
- While it admittedly happens in the protagonist's Imagine Spot, Everybody Hates Chris has a Sadist Teacher demand to know, apropos of nothing, "What is a2 plus b2?!?". The correct answer is apparently "c2". Could be justified if the quiz was on trigonometry, and c is assumed to be the hypotenu- OK, I'm overthinking this.
Music
- Two Words: Mariah Carey, who went so far as to name her most recent album E=MC2. She claims it stands for "(E) Emancipation (=) equals (MC) Mariah Carey to the second power." Yeah right.
- The second power? OMG, she's been multiplied by another Mariah Carey's worth? Don't worry, Zero x Zero still equals Zero.
- There is another Maria Carey (spelled slightly different), which is the stage name of a kind-of-similar-looking porn star.
- Wouldn't that just by Emancipation= Mariah Carey Carey? Unless of course it was E=(MC)2
- See the Quantum Mariah Carey Problem for further discussion.
Music Videos
- Weird Al Yankovic's video "White and Nerdy". Just to show how smart Alfred is. Ironically, it contains an error.
- Alas, in the song "Pancreas" he gets Newton's equation for the gravitational force between two masses wrong.
Newspaper Comics
- An old Sidney Harris cartoon lampshades this one: two scientists are standing in front of a blackboard full of equations. Toward the bottom right of the board, the chaos of integrals, summations, and other mathematical gobbledygook suddenly ends with "and then a miracle occurs" and an answer. The caption reads "You need to be more explicit here in step two."
Video Games
- The first few levels of Super Paper Mario feature "joke" equations in the background, made up of random numbers and mathematical symbols combined with famous Mario icons such as the Fire Flower and mushrooms.
- In Earthbound, Doctor Andonuts has a big chalkboard in his lab with nothing written on it but a big "E=mc2".
Webcomics
- This xkcd strip includes an integral without a variable of integration, as part of a clearly erroneous equation — but in this case the error is integral (sorry) to the punchline.
- A more elaborate variant appears in this cartoon by Tom Tomorrow. Instead of meaningless numerical symbols, it's an invalid proof that involves dividing by zero, perhaps to complement the scientist's fallacious reasoning.
- In Two Lumps, Eben is occasionally shown contemplating equations right before Snooch interrupts with his latest insanity. In at least one instance readers have submitted corrections for the math displayed.
Western Animation
- SpongeBob SquarePants usually has Sandy show SpongeBob some equations.
- Fairly Oddparents has done this as well.
- Abused by Dexters Laboratory.
- Professor Utonium's lab in The Powerpuff Girls.
- The intro to Pinky And The Brain has a scene where Brain is writing his "theory of everything" on a chalkboard, which is basically a bunch of pseudo-mathematical mumbo-jumbo, including "THX=1138".
- Spoofed in an episode of Pinky And The Brain once had Brain reveal that his latest plan to take over the world was hinged on an equation he had just uncovered. Pinky askes him if it is something complicated like E=mc2, and Brain replies that it is in fact even simpler, just E.
- Monkey Dust has a chalkboard full of geometry in a class teaching cottaging! (For non-UK readers, that's anonymous gay sex in public bathrooms). True to the title of this trope, the board also contains "run=dmc".
- Parodied by (who else?) The Simpsons, when Homer is an inventor. During a montage, he's shown writing equations on a blackboard. After he's done, the camera moves to shot of the house — where there's a massive explosion. Cut back to Homer: who examines his equation and crosses out the offending section, a drawing of a stick of dynamite, which he then replaces with something else. This results in another, bigger explosion.
- Also done in Phineas And Ferb. The boys finally solved it by replacing the bomb with a smiley face.
- The Simpsons was fond of this one. When Homer had a bright idea, the camera would occasionally do a close-up of his head, revealing two chimpanzees in graduation gowns and mortarboards writing E=mc2 on a chalkboard. Otherwise, the chimps would be grooming each other and eating the lice.
- The board in Arthur's class would often be filled with formulas like the Pythagorean theorem or simple derivatives, even though the characters are respectively three and six years too young for them. Apparently, this is part of Mr. Ratburn's Sadist Teacher reputation.
Web Original
- The title card for the Angry Video Game Nerd video "Chronologically Confused" features the Nerd in front of a board filled with nonsensical equations and formulae, including at points a Triforce and a drawing of Mario.
- E equals MC Hawking.
- This FailBlog entry tries to show Einstein's equation but, well, fails.
Exceptions
open/close all folders
Anime and Manga
- The opening credits of The Melancholy Of Haruhi Suzumiya feature a number of diagrams and equations, including the obligatory E=mc2, the Drake Equation and Shannon's source entropy formula, appropriately enough (as well as plenty most people have never heard of). In "Snow Mountain Syndrome" of the later novels, though, solving an instance of Euler's planar graph formula becomes a matter of great importance, so this is to be expected. That and the guy that writes the Light Novel likes math.
- The second season opening is, if anything, worse.
- Clausius-Clapeyron and the derivation via the Maxwell relations is extremely common, usually as Mad Science. It's easy to copy verbatim, and looks scary because it's an important equation in Therodynamics and requires high level chemistry, physics and mathematics to understand. This Troper was introduced to it in a 400 level chemistry course with the professor telling us to pause the program when ever you see mad science on chalk boards as it will often be the exact board he was showing. This Troper then watched Full Metal Panic and never forgot the Derivation.
- A borderline example: in a chapter of Pluto by Naoki Urasawa, we see Atom to write on a wall a huge quantity of equations. While they are probabily correct (the notation is correct, for instance and any single expression makes sense), it is not probable that they are "the formula of the anti-proton bomb": some are mathematical definitions, or Fourier tranforms, other appears to be basic equations of quantum physics, but surely not a project of bomb.
- Subverted in a Crowning Momentof Awesome in Tobaku Datenroku Zero. Near the end of a psychotic quiz game in which a super-sharp pendulum is lowered when the answer is wrong, the titular character Ukai Zero is answering a trivia question about the period of a pendulum. He's shown to be under pressure, thinking up a bunch of random equations which have nothing to do with the relevant speeds of rotation. And he gets the question wrong. However, it turns out that all those equations were him using the measurements of his body parts to ascertain that, with his next incorrect answer, the anchor would crash into the block his head was resting on, effectively winning the game. The MC was not happy.
Film
- A very common mockery thrown at the movie A Beautiful Mind is that in promo posters for the movie, Russell Crowe as John Nash is sitting making a thinking face behind a glass wall covered in equations. Right on his forehead is the statement "0 < pi < 1". Geeks had a lot of fun mocking the apparent total lack of understanding of math in Hollywood and coming up for ways this statement might be justified (often speculating on the shape of Russell Crowe's penis). In reality, there was a perfectly good explanation, in fact: The math consultant for the movie (who spoke at this troper's school) had been asked to help prepare the shoot for this poster by covering the glass wall with impressive-looking equations, and for "authenticity's" sake had done so using real equations from the real John Nash's papers. John Nash was a game theorist, and he had written a paper involving an imaginary game with 24 players. Since there are 24 letters in the Greek alphabet, he playfully decided to name the imaginary players after Greek letters. The "0 < pi < 1" statement comes from a portion of the paper describing an imaginary situation involving placement of turn order within the game. Notice that Nash was specifically doing this in order to undermine the dogmatic insistence of certain narrow-minded mathematicians on always using the same symbols to mean the same thing, when, after all, pi is nothing more than the Greek letter "π", and for people who have familiarity with other disciplines beyond simple college-level math it can mean all kinds of things (such as profit when used in a financial context or inflation in macroeconomics).
- Though as an economics major who specialized in game theory, the explanation of the concept of Nash equilibrium (the crowning achievement of John Nash's career which revolutionized the school of game theory) is painfully wrong.
- There are lies, damned lies, statistics, and game theory (all of the articles I've seen about it in Scientific American involve the most arbitrary and implausible "games" which apparently were invented for the sole purpose of "proving" game theorists correct).
- But that's how maths works. Any example, no matter how convoluted, is enough for an existence proof.
Live Action TV
- Considering that the show NUMB3RS has, well, numbers as its unique gimmick, it would be pretty insulting if this were the case.
- Supposedly, it's not. They keep a mathematician on staff who writes all of the equations seen.
- Which, unfortunately, is not to say they don't make mistakes. While the math is often correct, much of the equations and anaylizi Charlie Epps uses often are not correctly called for in the situation, or, while coming to the correct conclusion, make the work a bit more difficult then it could have been.
- For the physics class scenes in 3rd Rock From The Sun, much of Dick's dialogue was written by Elegant Universe author Dr. Brian Greene.
- Which is kind of odd seeing as there was at least one entire episode focusing on what a horrible teacher he is...
- Good scientists don't generally make good teachers.
- This college student can attest to that.
Newspaper Comics
- One strip of the newspaper comic Foxtrot has Insufferable Genius Jason Fox, a ten-year-old, solving a simple division problem on his class chalkboard. He rewrites the equation in about a dozen different ways, many of which would require knowledge of trigonometry or calculus to understand. Given that the cartoonist — Bill Amend — majored in physics in college,
it's quite probable that all of them are correct.
- Another strip has Jason serving as Paige's math tutor and the latter asking him what is the cosine of 60 degrees. Jason then starts rattling off a really long sum and only stops when Paige reminds him he's not paying him by the hour. Said sum is the actual Taylor series expansion of the cosine meaning of course he could continue going forever.
- Yet another strip has Jason presenting Paige with an alphanumeric cipher with a twist: the key is comprised of 26 math problems, one for each letter of the alphabet. One of the clues involves integral calculus (but of course it's for Q, which doesn't get used much). The answer is "PAIGE FOX IS BAD AT MATH".
- And another strip shows Jason doing a problem in class where he has to calculate the area of a farm enclosed by a fence of some length and width. Naturally, he draws out a coordinate plane for the farm and does an integration to find the area under the curve. That's definitely the method you all would choose, right?
Western Animation
- Futurama has quite the opposite. Several of the writers are math people, so there are math jokes in the background that laymen won't even notice, like the number 1729 (yes, that's a joke).
- They also parody and subvert on occasion too. For example, in the first season episode "Mars University" Fry signs up for the Professor's course, entitled "The Mathematics of Quantum Neutrino Fields" which Fry mishears as "Wonton Burrito Meals". When Fry finally turns up to the class he finds the Professor teaching complete nonsense, using an illustration named Witten's Dog to explain why electrons taste like grapeade (a parody of Schrödinger's cat). This is especially amusing when you consider that earlier in the episode the Professor himself refers to genetic engineering as "preposterous science-fiction mumbo-jumbo".
- The Professor also claimed that the name itself was an E=MC Hammer; he just made up some imposing-sounding nonsense so that no one would take his class, because he's a professor and doesn't know how to teach, and indeed Fry's motivation for taking the course is apparently because Professor Farnsworth is teaching it.
- Bender has a box of P and a box of nP in his closet.
- When Bender first meets Flexo, they find it greatly amusing that both of them have serial numbers expressible as a sum of two cubes (like 1729 above).
Real Life
- Nobel Prize winning physicist Leon Lederman speculated in The God Particle that physicists in trouble could write the number 137 on a sign and expect other physicists to come to their assistance. The reason: 137 is (very close to) the reciprocal of alpha, the fine structure constant, and one of the most arbitrary-seeming constants in physics (c can be altered quite a bit, but change alpha even a little and stable atoms can't form).
|
|
