The Brown Noser

Issue date: 2/26/10 Section: Science and Technology

Media Credit: photobucket.com "Where that cat is going, he won't need roads," said Hogrefe. "Because he's dead."

"Of all the paths my day could have taken it had to collapse into this one", lamented Professor of Theoretical Physics Jim Hogrefe, who wishes he was in just about any other universe besides this one right now. "I really feel blindsided by this", the professor continued. "I mean, this morning was decidedly neutral. It could be a good day or a bad day, and in a weird way it sort of felt like it was both. But things really took a turn for the worse when I hit that cat on my way to work".

The 5kg cat, traveling at 3 meters per second at 30 degrees north of east collided inelastically with Hogrefe's 1,800kg sedan, traveling at 15 meters per second west. Needless to say, the law of conservation of momentum was not on the poor kitty's side. "I feel so terrible about what happened; this was just the wrong spatial position entirely" Hogrefe lamented. "I keep running the numbers over in my head. What if I had seen the cat 2 seconds before impact and had slammed on the brakes? Would the friction between my tires and the road have done enough work to lower my inertia to a non-lethal level? I could run some tests and find out what the coefficient of kinetic friction was, but I guess there's no point in beating myself up about it. What's done is done. Well…unless." A brief glimmer appeared in the professor's eye, though it quickly faded. "Nah, screw it" he theorized.

Unfortunately, Hogrefe's day only worsened from there. Due to the accident, the professor arrived over 10 minutes late to his class. While bemoaning his woefully incorrect temporal position, the professor tripped in his hurry, spilling coffee all down his shirt in front of his students. He exclaimed, "I can't catch a break. It's about as elusive as a neutrino, but at least for those I have 50 trillion chances per second. Yup, more than 50 trillion neutrinos coming from the sun pass through your body every second. I bet that is blowing your mind right now. You're welcome". Hogrefe then sighed. "I'm sorry I'm being so snappy, it's been a rough day. I just want to crawl into a black hole and never, ever come out again"

Witnessing Hogrefe break down (mentally, that is. His constituent molecules remained very much intact), his students began to squirm uncomfortably. "I think I finally understood all this stuff he's been saying about special relativity" remarked Darrin Ulhir '11. "I mean, at least for me, time was going really, really slowly. I wanted to just start running, even if it would only reduce this uncomfortable moment by 0.0000000000000013 seconds. I wonder if you can convert awkwardness into kinetic energy"

Eventually, Hogrefe pulled himself together and managed to give a dynamic lecture on Newton's laws. Later in his office, he mused "You know, it really could have been worse. Throughout the day, I was only off by a single dimension, first my position on the road, and later my time in class, but at least I didn't screw up both at once." His secretary then called into his office "Weren't you supposed to be at that meeting across campus ten minutes ago?" The professor's face fell. "Damnit," he postulated.

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