Tag Archives: physics

Conservation of Evil

Text: Below is a interview about a folk metaphor, conservation of evil.

Interviewer: Are there any sayings for groups you’re a part of?

Interviewee: Yeah, so, uh, in the physics community, when we find ourselves trying to solve a very difficult problem, and we make, let’s say, an approximation or, we apply some technique to make it easier, it turns out that that just doesn’t make the problem easier. It just shifts the difficulty to later, and, uh, we, that’s what we call the conservation of evil, and it kind of comes from, like uh, you know in physics there’s like a, conservation laws, conservation of energy, conservation of momentum, and stuff like that, and that’s just a fun play on how the problem is still as difficult as it was before, you just shifted it to somewhere else.

Context:

The interviewee is a college Senior who is studying physics. He was asked about any folk speech he knew from any academic folk groups he was in. He thought for a bit, then remembered the above folk speech. He uses the folk speech to describe to his classmates physics problems that are hard no matter what technique is applied to them.

Analysis:

The folk speech demonstrates the experience of solving a hard physics problem. While a student may use laws of physics to try to simplify the problem, there are many unlabeled aspects of questions that relate to the experience of working on a hard problem. Therefore, folk speech and jargon is necessary to explain the characteristics of the problem. This folk speech also exists as an example of moralizing physics problems. The physics problem is difficult to solve, therefore it is labeled evil. The expression also holds wisdom that is more generalizable to more areas than just physics problems. Some issues are difficult, no matter how they are repositioned.

Dirty Joke – American

Nationality: Slovenian/Mexican
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: University of Southern California
Performance Date: April 4, 2011
Primary Language: English

The informant says she heard the following joke from a student at the University of Southern California: “I heard this one on, um, a—a hiking trip I went on . . . and it was a nighttime hike and we were looking at the stars, and the guides were telling astronomy stories and stuff, but one of them, uh, he told this dirty physics joke.”

The joke follows: “It’s uh, based on the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, which, uh, I guess states something like, ‘If you know something—object’s position, then you can’t know its velocity and vice versa, if you know something’s velocity you can’t know its positions.’ So the joke is, uh, ‘Why was the physics, uh, the physics student, er, um, bad in bed? Because every time he found the right position he didn’t have the right velocity, and every time he had the right velocity he couldn’t find the right position.’”

The informant likes to retell this joke to people she knows are studying math.

She finds the joke funny because it makes light of a serious and unfortunate situation.

The joke is clearly intended for an educated audience; to understand the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, even with an explanation, requires some small knowledge of atomic structure. The Principle refers especially to electrons, which are so small that they’re hard to place. The telling of the joke might even be seen as somewhat of a status symbol—if you get the joke, you’re “in.” The joke of course has a terminus post quem of the proposal of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.