2015-02-28

A four-panel comic. Panel 1: An enthusiastic wizard announces to a group of cheering kids, "HEY KIDS! TODAY WE'RE GONNA SHRINK DOWN TO THE SIZE OF A VIRUS TO INVESTIGATE THE HUMAN BODY!" The kids yell "YAYYYYYY!!!" Panel 2: The wizard casts a spell, "ABRA KAZAM!" with a green magical flash. Panel 3: The wizard is now shrunk down small and looks confused, calling out "KIDS? KIDS? HEY, WHY IS EVERYBODY AGONY-IZATING?" (implying the shrinking went horribly wrong at microscopic scale). Panel 4: A newspaper headline reads "WIZARD FAILS TO ACCOUNT FOR MICROFLUIDICS — LEADS TO GEEK DEATH PENALTY," with a small illustration. The joke: shrinking to virus size means fluid dynamics behave completely differently (microfluidics), with fatal results the wizard didn't anticipate. Votey: A separate hand-drawn newspaper with the headline "NEWSPAPER USES WORD 'MICROFLUIDICS'" — a wry aside that a newspaper actually printing the technical term is itself newsworthy.