2014-11-06

A two-part SMBC comic. In the main panel, a man with dark hair and a mustache cheerfully suggests to a red-haired woman wearing glasses, "Hey, I think we can save gas money if we carpool to work." The woman responds with heavy sarcasm, looking pained: "Oh ha ha. Yeah, right. And the stars will just keep on burning forever." The bewildered man asks, "Seriously, what is the matter with you?" Below is a chart: the y-axis reads "Suspicion that something violates conservation of energy" and the x-axis reads "Knowledge of physics," with a red curve rising exponentially — the more physics you know, the more an ordinary suggestion sounds like a perpetual-motion-machine claim. In the votey aftercomic, the same glasses-wearing woman, deadpan and exhausted, says, "We can keep the wheels turning with magnets. Moron." — mockingly putting absurd free-energy ideas in her companion's mouth.