How is it uphill both ways, though? It only seems uphill. From his point of view, the world is flat, but if you zoom out a bit, it appears to curve.
Essentially, he really isn’t going up a hill, he’s walking a flat plane. It would be hard, however, if his path was a spiral (of sorts), seeing as the gravity is the same all around the edges of the world.
If it was a spiral, he would be walking at an angle to the ‘ground’.
to make it uphill both ways you’d need two points of gravity, so that one is “under” the school and the other under his home… but then he would actually be weightless and could float anywhere he wanted…
ah, whatever, it’s probably just all inside Biff’s head anyway -_-‘
My theory is that his little world is spinning, the the force of ‘gravity’ is duplicated by the centripical force (I know I spelled it wrong, so sue me.). kinda like those ‘UFO’ rides at the fairs. This is also the solution as to how there is gravity on the game Halo.
The image only moves once. He has to walk up the huge curve to get to school, the picture flips, and then he has to walk up the huge curve to get home.
the rate of rotation can be such that the amount of centripital force is identical to the force exerted by Earth’s gravity (if you consider the centripital forces Biff is under too great for him to be able to move, then tell me you are able to move under the gravitational forces being exerted on you by the giant ball of rock you’re sitting on). this is how we can acheive “artificial gravity” in a weightless environment like outer space. motion is measured in relative terms–depending on how you look at it, you can be considered to be in motion even when you are siting perfectly still because the earth is revolving around the sun. Biff is in motion realitive to the ground he’s walking on even though he may not be in motion relative to the point around which his world is revolving.
Back in my day we didn’t have no fancy new fangled “School busses”. I had to walk 14 miles in the snow, uphill, carrying all 17 of my OLDER siblings 7 days a week because when I was your age the communists made us go to school everyday of the year AND we had to eat mystery meat for lunch everday…and they didn’t offer chocolate milk. Only Commie juice!!
When my Grandad was growing up, they didn’t have school. He had to walk uphill both ways, butt nekkid & barefoot, in the snow, carrying his 17 brothers and sisters – for nothing! And he LIKED it!
It isn’t as bad as the hills in Redmond, Washington. Very steep hills. I would get off the bus with a heavy backpack and I’d have to climb up a hill every day I came home from school.
I did that for about 6 years and I’m glad I no longer do it.
I *literally* walked a mile and a half to highschool, with a huge uphill slope at some point both ways. No snow, but i still get old-man griping rights
If you think about it, if he’s going uphill both ways, then whenever we go anywhere here on earth, we are going downhill both ways. cause our earth curves inversely to Biff’s.
Mattz physics is wrong, it cant be a gravitational thing cause he would be weightless inside the thing. I don’t feel like explaining it cause I’m lazy, but if you look into it, or ask someone with some college level physics courses, you should be able to get the reasons. Also if its the centrifugal force (For anyone who remembers a highschool phsysics teacher saying its fake, its acctually not, but… well the reasons for that are complicated, but you can also ask a college professor about that too) then he is never walks up hill cause the the force would always be perpendicular to the surface. So either bAT L’s hamster wheel is right, or CynicalSavant is right. Given the nature of biffs world though, I dont think we should be considering this so deeply.
Lemme tell ya sonny, lemme set you straight
you kids today ain’t never had it rough
always had everything handed to ya on a silver plate
you lazy brats think nothins’ good enough
Well, no-one ever drove me to school when it was 90 degrees below
we had to walk butt naked, through forty miles of snow
worked in the coal mine 22 hours a day for just half a cent
had to sell my internal organs just to pay the rent
when I was your age
when I was your age
when I was your age
when I was your age
lemme tell ya somethin’, you whiny little snot
there’s somethin’ wrong with all you kids today
ya just don’t appreciate all the things ya got
we were hungry, broke, and miserable, and we liked it fine that way
well there was 73 of us, livin’ in a cardboard box
all I got for Christmas, was a lousy bag o’ rocks
every night for dinner, we got a big ol’ chunk o’ dirt
if we were really good we didn’t get dessert
when I was your age
when I was your age
when I was your age
when I was your age
didn’t have no telephone
didn’t have no fax machine
all we had was a couple cans and a crummy peice o’ string
didn’t have no swimmin’ pool when I was just a lad
a ( I couldn’t hear this part) tank was the closest thing we had
didn’t have no dental floss
had to use old rusty nails
didn’t have nintendo
we just ( didn’t hear this part either ) on snails
didn’t have no water bed(?)
had to sleep on broken glass
didn’t have no lawn mower
we used our teeth to cut the grass
what’s the matter now sonny
ya say ya don’t believe this junk
you think my story is wearin’ kinda thin
I’ll tell ya one thing
I never was such a disrespectful punk
back then we had a thing called discipline
my dad would whoop us every night til’ a quarter after twelve
then he’d get too tired
and he’d make us whoop ourselves
then he chopped me into into pieces
and played frisbee with my brain
and lemme tell ya junior
ya never heard me complain
when I was your age
when I was your age
when I was your age
when I was your age
when I was your age
when I was your age
when I was your age
when I was your age
To elementary school children: Back when I was your age I didn’t have a TV. We walked three miles to the library. We walked back home with twenty pounds each of books, and counted ourselves lucky when we remembered to bring sacks or something to carry them in. We also didn’t have a computer, but almost nobody had one in those days.
Well, as for Junior High, I think we had a set, but we weren’t subscribed for cable, so we only had local channels. I remember eight or nine channels, but two were in Spanish. We might have had a computer, but it was dial-up and we only had one phone line. A day at the library was still a good day out.
In the first half of high school, the home situation was similar to for junior high, but in the second half we finally upgraded to DSL, and went from no-cable to satellite tv with DVR. Guess what? There’s still nothing on TV!
Then I graduate high school without having gotten my driver’s license (I didn’t want one; I couldn’t see any advantage myself, I feared for the safety of myself and others, and it might mean an extra source of chores). But I went on to University, so I rode my bicycle twenty miles round trip every day to and from school almost regardless of the weather. I’m now working on gaining weight so I’m not “underweight”, so I can add Boot Camp to this list as I join the USAF.
As many things that showed up in this post, I always had thought I had it easy.
Heck, that could be uphill or downhill, depending on your perspective. Glass half empty, or half full? XD Same with the Earth that doesn’t contain Biff…We could always be going up, or always be going down.
Gravity being a conservative force it is not dependant on rout and as a result you cannot go uphill both ways. However some forces like friction are nonconservative and are dependant on the rout, in these cases it can be possible to have force required in both directions.
In the Biffverse (the universe which Biff inhabits) gravity is not fully conservitive (but close to it) meaning that what would be flat ground in our universe would be uphill both ways in his. If it was flat in one direction in his universe it would be uphill twice as steep in the other direction. The main consequence of this is that there would need to be another energy source to hold his planet from the star. A solution to this issue would be to have gravity only be nonconservative over short distances meaning all of astrophysics would be left intact.
In the end your parents never walked uphill both ways to school, but in the Biffverse (where all physics is normal except where required for the joke) it could happen
I always wondered how my da managed to do that… now I know!
Uphill both ways – nice.
The road from my house to the local store is uphill both ways. I’m almost certain.
It all makes sense now…
B-but-but… Wouldn’t it be flat both ways? My head hurts…
if only it could be downhill…..
ah the wonders of abstract thinking
Trippy.
My siblings’ High School’s path is downhill at the beginning then uphill… so they go Downhill and uphill on the way back too =P…
Could be downhill both ways too, just would be a real tiny planet.
So Biff lives in one of them spinning space environments like Babylon 5?
How is it uphill both ways, though? It only seems uphill. From his point of view, the world is flat, but if you zoom out a bit, it appears to curve.
Essentially, he really isn’t going up a hill, he’s walking a flat plane. It would be hard, however, if his path was a spiral (of sorts), seeing as the gravity is the same all around the edges of the world.
If it was a spiral, he would be walking at an angle to the ‘ground’.
A circle? No.
XD too much physics
Well his school is in the sky above his house… I’m not sure how much more “up” it could be.
Wow, if reading the image upside down didn’t hurt my head enough, my head just exploded after reading, or attempting to read, Mattz’s comment. Ouch.
Um… speaking of physics…
to make it uphill both ways you’d need two points of gravity, so that one is “under” the school and the other under his home… but then he would actually be weightless and could float anywhere he wanted…
ah, whatever, it’s probably just all inside Biff’s head anyway -_-‘
He could just jump really high..
That saves the journey either way 😛
Noodles x
Maybe it’s a hamster wheel design so that he’s always at the bottom. That’s what I thought when I first read it.
My theory is that his little world is spinning, the the force of ‘gravity’ is duplicated by the centripical force (I know I spelled it wrong, so sue me.). kinda like those ‘UFO’ rides at the fairs. This is also the solution as to how there is gravity on the game Halo.
next thing to learn in school: writing backwards cursive!
lol it’s fun writing backwards cursive cuz i feel like davinci ^__^
The image only moves once. He has to walk up the huge curve to get to school, the picture flips, and then he has to walk up the huge curve to get home.
My brain exploded. Would say more, but I’m picking up the pieces and stapling them back together.
Well if it was centrifugal force, I doubt he’d be able to make much progress to anywhere.
Let just say it’s magic, kay?
the rate of rotation can be such that the amount of centripital force is identical to the force exerted by Earth’s gravity (if you consider the centripital forces Biff is under too great for him to be able to move, then tell me you are able to move under the gravitational forces being exerted on you by the giant ball of rock you’re sitting on). this is how we can acheive “artificial gravity” in a weightless environment like outer space. motion is measured in relative terms–depending on how you look at it, you can be considered to be in motion even when you are siting perfectly still because the earth is revolving around the sun. Biff is in motion realitive to the ground he’s walking on even though he may not be in motion relative to the point around which his world is revolving.
So he built his house on the curve last time? Foolish Biff. =P
Back in my day we didn’t have no fancy new fangled “School busses”. I had to walk 14 miles in the snow, uphill, carrying all 17 of my OLDER siblings 7 days a week because when I was your age the communists made us go to school everyday of the year AND we had to eat mystery meat for lunch everday…and they didn’t offer chocolate milk. Only Commie juice!!
When I was your age…
When my Grandad was growing up, they didn’t have school. He had to walk uphill both ways, butt nekkid & barefoot, in the snow, carrying his 17 brothers and sisters – for nothing! And he LIKED it!
Hell, that looks like a typical day at my school. They don’t call us the “Hilltoppers” for nothing…
Getting up would be a pain, but going down looks like it would be fun. 🙂
It isn’t as bad as the hills in Redmond, Washington. Very steep hills. I would get off the bus with a heavy backpack and I’d have to climb up a hill every day I came home from school.
I did that for about 6 years and I’m glad I no longer do it.
When I Was Your Age…
(YAY FOR WEIRD AL!)
Mattz killed me with physics….
I agree, Malachite Dragon. Go Weird Al indeed.
It all makes sense now….
Hey! The high school near me is Park View! How weird.
I *literally* walked a mile and a half to highschool, with a huge uphill slope at some point both ways. No snow, but i still get old-man griping rights
If you think about it, if he’s going uphill both ways, then whenever we go anywhere here on earth, we are going downhill both ways. cause our earth curves inversely to Biff’s.
Mattz physics is wrong, it cant be a gravitational thing cause he would be weightless inside the thing. I don’t feel like explaining it cause I’m lazy, but if you look into it, or ask someone with some college level physics courses, you should be able to get the reasons. Also if its the centrifugal force (For anyone who remembers a highschool phsysics teacher saying its fake, its acctually not, but… well the reasons for that are complicated, but you can also ask a college professor about that too) then he is never walks up hill cause the the force would always be perpendicular to the surface. So either bAT L’s hamster wheel is right, or CynicalSavant is right. Given the nature of biffs world though, I dont think we should be considering this so deeply.
just how old is biff?
…
Babylon 5 reference~
Happy~
Lyrics to Weird Al’s “When I was your age.”
Lemme tell ya sonny, lemme set you straight
you kids today ain’t never had it rough
always had everything handed to ya on a silver plate
you lazy brats think nothins’ good enough
Well, no-one ever drove me to school when it was 90 degrees below
we had to walk butt naked, through forty miles of snow
worked in the coal mine 22 hours a day for just half a cent
had to sell my internal organs just to pay the rent
when I was your age
when I was your age
when I was your age
when I was your age
lemme tell ya somethin’, you whiny little snot
there’s somethin’ wrong with all you kids today
ya just don’t appreciate all the things ya got
we were hungry, broke, and miserable, and we liked it fine that way
well there was 73 of us, livin’ in a cardboard box
all I got for Christmas, was a lousy bag o’ rocks
every night for dinner, we got a big ol’ chunk o’ dirt
if we were really good we didn’t get dessert
when I was your age
when I was your age
when I was your age
when I was your age
didn’t have no telephone
didn’t have no fax machine
all we had was a couple cans and a crummy peice o’ string
didn’t have no swimmin’ pool when I was just a lad
a ( I couldn’t hear this part) tank was the closest thing we had
didn’t have no dental floss
had to use old rusty nails
didn’t have nintendo
we just ( didn’t hear this part either ) on snails
didn’t have no water bed(?)
had to sleep on broken glass
didn’t have no lawn mower
we used our teeth to cut the grass
what’s the matter now sonny
ya say ya don’t believe this junk
you think my story is wearin’ kinda thin
I’ll tell ya one thing
I never was such a disrespectful punk
back then we had a thing called discipline
my dad would whoop us every night til’ a quarter after twelve
then he’d get too tired
and he’d make us whoop ourselves
then he chopped me into into pieces
and played frisbee with my brain
and lemme tell ya junior
ya never heard me complain
when I was your age
when I was your age
when I was your age
when I was your age
when I was your age
when I was your age
when I was your age
when I was your age
find this vid at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kB78hM_lkI
well my friends its a good comment obviously mocking the old cliche of the “back in my day” speeches we all know and love
you guys are over thinking it i mean seriously applying physics to biffs world?????
people in the last few comics hes been cut in half electricuted and lit on fire
this man is above and beyond the laws of our world
in other words
biff is THE man
I must agree with the above statement. You are over thinking it. It’s a comic. Laugh and enjoy it.
I went to a Park View School!
I must have this as a shirt XD
To elementary school children: Back when I was your age I didn’t have a TV. We walked three miles to the library. We walked back home with twenty pounds each of books, and counted ourselves lucky when we remembered to bring sacks or something to carry them in. We also didn’t have a computer, but almost nobody had one in those days.
Well, as for Junior High, I think we had a set, but we weren’t subscribed for cable, so we only had local channels. I remember eight or nine channels, but two were in Spanish. We might have had a computer, but it was dial-up and we only had one phone line. A day at the library was still a good day out.
In the first half of high school, the home situation was similar to for junior high, but in the second half we finally upgraded to DSL, and went from no-cable to satellite tv with DVR. Guess what? There’s still nothing on TV!
Then I graduate high school without having gotten my driver’s license (I didn’t want one; I couldn’t see any advantage myself, I feared for the safety of myself and others, and it might mean an extra source of chores). But I went on to University, so I rode my bicycle twenty miles round trip every day to and from school almost regardless of the weather. I’m now working on gaining weight so I’m not “underweight”, so I can add Boot Camp to this list as I join the USAF.
As many things that showed up in this post, I always had thought I had it easy.
At Pysmon:
Omg, are you serious? Woweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
solutions=homeschool?
And THAT’S what the center of the Earth REALLY looks like.
you my good man, have broken the code.
Steve-o:
The parts you couldn’t hear were “our neighbor’s septic tank” and “just poured salt on snails”. 🙂
(Year-late response YAY!)
Heck, that could be uphill or downhill, depending on your perspective. Glass half empty, or half full? XD Same with the Earth that doesn’t contain Biff…We could always be going up, or always be going down.
yah know what’s great about being the main charracter of a web comic? not having to learn phisics BECAUSE THEY DON’T HAVE TO WORK
And now I know why I could never successfully picture walking uphill both ways. I was being realistic.
that’s some hill!
There are two figures in this comic. Does this mean there is another Biff on the opposite side of his house, and the two switch places?
Physics:
Gravity being a conservative force it is not dependant on rout and as a result you cannot go uphill both ways. However some forces like friction are nonconservative and are dependant on the rout, in these cases it can be possible to have force required in both directions.
In the Biffverse (the universe which Biff inhabits) gravity is not fully conservitive (but close to it) meaning that what would be flat ground in our universe would be uphill both ways in his. If it was flat in one direction in his universe it would be uphill twice as steep in the other direction. The main consequence of this is that there would need to be another energy source to hold his planet from the star. A solution to this issue would be to have gravity only be nonconservative over short distances meaning all of astrophysics would be left intact.
In the end your parents never walked uphill both ways to school, but in the Biffverse (where all physics is normal except where required for the joke) it could happen
i just want to know how that guy is dtanding upside-down…
Now your thinking with portals
troll science.