think I have to get this car.... [828x844 - 60KB]

Milk production at a dairy farm was low, so the farmer wrote to the local university, asking for help from academia. A multidisciplinary team of professors was assembled, headed by a theoretical physicist, and two weeks of intensive on-site investigation took place. The scholars then returned to the university, notebooks crammed with data, where the task of writing the report was left to the team leader. Shortly thereafter the physicist returned to the farm, saying to the farmer, "I have the solution, but it works only in the case of spherical cows in a vacuum".

parent
link

[–] • 0 pt

(edited )

I take that to mean that they had no answer at all so they just made some impossibility up so they wouldn't look dumb?

parent
link

[–] [deleted] • 0 pt

(edited )

No, it's an acknowledgement that modeling reality 100% accurately is impossible. So we simplify the problem to get as close as an answer as we can realistically get without wasting time/resources on irrelevant data.

The shape of a cow and the air pressure is pretty much irrelevant when it comes to modeling milk production. So, you can leave it out of your calculations and still do a pretty good simulation with fairly accurate predictions.

But we recognize the absurdity of the situation and joke about it, because it is kinda funny.