A while back a friend wrote a FaceBook status stating:
My three year old is going to have awesome abs - he does planks constantly
My response:
That's incredible! Most kids dont grasp quantum mechanics until much much later!
Planck's planksAt this instant I had a self-image of myself as a very bright and funny guy. I was the Jim Carrey of nerds. I patiently sat and waited for the responses addressing how clever I was to associate "planks constantly" with "Planck's constant". And waited. And waited. Alas, they never came.
I actually didn't quite remember exactly what Planck's constant was, so I looked it up quickly in Wikipedia:
The Planck constant (denoted h), also called Planck's constant, is a physical constant reflecting the sizes of quanta in quantum mechanics. It is named after Max Planck, one of the founders of quantum theory. The Planck constant was first described as the proportionality constant between the energy (E) of a photon and the frequency of its associated electromagnetic wave (ν).
I briefly though that perhaps I should post this text to the Facebook status. Then people could finally appreciate my rapier wit.
comic book guyAs a little more time passed my self image started to degenerate. Maybe I wasn't the Jim Carrey of nerds. Maybe instead I'm the comic book guy from the Simpsons. An annoying, condescending geek who makes jokes and takes pleasure from the fact that most people around him aren't going to understand.
Sigh.
It's not easy being nerdy.