Top five conversation-stoppers when introduced to a physicist:<\/p>\n
5. “Oh, really. My brother-in-law’s in medicine, too.”<\/p>\n
4. “Um… Ahh… That must be…. interesting.”<\/p>\n
3. “Physics was my worst subject in high school.”<\/p>\n
2. “Physics was my best subject in high school.”<\/p>\n
1. “You must be really smart.”<\/p>\n
Number 1 is especially hard to respond to. What do you say? “Yes” is right out. “No” isn’t a whole lot more attractive. “Nah, I just cheated on all my exams” has the benefit of causing interest, but it’s not necessarily the kind of interest you want in those kinds of situations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Top five conversation-stoppers when introduced to a physicist: 5. “Oh, really. My brother-in-law’s in medicine, too.” 4. “Um… Ahh… That must be…. interesting.” 3. “Physics was my worst subject in high school.” 2. “Physics was my best subject in high school.” 1. “You must be really smart.” Number 1 is especially hard to respond to.… Continue reading Top five lists<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-65","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-3","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelnielsen.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelnielsen.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelnielsen.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelnielsen.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelnielsen.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/michaelnielsen.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelnielsen.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelnielsen.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelnielsen.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}