I’m doing my Master’s in Physics in a predominantly technological institute, swarming with engineering types. Engineers never cease to amaze me with their ability to ask really dumb questions about physics, I mean of all people you’d expect them to be better informed. One of the most common and irritating comments I get are: “I’ve just proved Einstein wrong”. A little more enquiry gets them lanched into this long argument of how time dilation can’t work because if moving clocks are slower, than the moving clock should see a stationary one as slower. As I patiently explain that, that is exactly the case, they go on and on about how that’s a contradiction. Then, I’ve tried to explain in as much detail as I can but they refuse to understand the basic idea of the reletivity of simultaneaty and so on…

Nowadays, whenever I get such a crackpot, my immediate response is, why don’t you send that for publication, the Physical Review would love it.

1) “So do you like have to write a computer program for that?” or the variant “Oh, so you write computer programs? Have you seen X? It’s really cool”

or

2) “So you fix computers?”

or

3) “I can’t get | | . How would I fix that?”

I know at this point that I should just let it go, but it makes me SO ANGRY that I get confused with some IT moron (nothing against you IT people, but likening me with my PhD to some geek with a bachelor’s degree who sets up your network is insulting). I inevitably begin with Edsger Dijkstra – “Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes.” and then say lots of very technical things (”graph theory”, “erdos”, “lattice”, “propagation”, etc) until the questioner has retreated thoroughly from the IT end of things.

Sigh.

My aunt asking about my new telescope: “How far can it see?” “Erm…”

Another relative at same telescope after having had a little telescopically illustrated lecture about the planets and so on. We were looking at a bright cresent moon (not Earthlight)… “The shape of the moon, thats caused by the reflections of the sun off the Earth, isn’t it?” [stunned silence]

Another good one many years ago when discussing the visibility of a solar eclipse. “…but it all depends on the phase of the moon, doesn’t it?”

I’m not making these up.

Their daughter was studying art history.

A couple months ago the wife of a local farmer was trying to sell us two water pumps. Not knowing about the difference between both, we went to a mechanics workshop (an actual workshop, this is, no an academical one) to ask. The boss explained:
Boss: “This pump uses valves, you can put it inside the water and it is pushed above, but the water must be very clean. This another has not such problem and it can work even with residual water; the turbine centrifuges the water away and it sucks water from this tube.”
We: “Er yeah…”
Boss: “I mean it is a suction pump, you can not use a suction pump for heights greater than about 7 meters” (pause)
Me: (smiling) “eh, yes, I see”

Of course when outing from the workshop my friend was kind enough to ask me the question the boss was waiting in his pause: “and even with a bigger centrifuge?”.

man at party: So what do you do?

me: I’m working on my PhD in math, focusing on algebraic geometry.
man: Oh, so do you know about sacred geometry?

The conversation didn’t really go much further than that, surprisingly.