Always room for beer...

When I was in college, and hanging out with those groups of friends who will make a conscious effort not to contact each other after graduation, I remember a joke popping up.

A science professor is explaining something – I believe it was atomic weight – and in order to show how much material can be packed into a defined amount of space, he pulls out a large glass vase.

First he fills the vase with large, round, smooth river rocks. He packs as many rocks as he can into the space, and then asks his students if he can fit anything else in there. They tell him no.

Then the professor pulls out a bag of gravel and pours it into the vase. While the entire bag cannot be poured in, there is enough space between the stones that most of it makes it in. Then the professor asks once again if the students think anything else can get in there. The no this time is uncertain, but still unanimous.

Then the professor pulls out a bag of sand. Again, the entire bag doesn’t make it in, but enough does to prove that there is still space within the jar. The professor explains that the students should be conscious of the open space within ‘solid’ objects. That some objects can take more than they expect before they reach a full capacity like the vase has now.

One of the students, who wears his baseball cap at odd angles and is seen more often in the downtown bars than in class, suddenly raises his hand. He says loudly and clearly that isn’t true. Astonished that a student who barely made an effort before is suddenly interested enough to test this theory, the professor asks him why.

The student then goes up to the front of the class, pulls a can of beer from his backpack and proceeds to pour the contents into the vase. He manages to get the entire can into the vase.

“No matter how tightly your life is packed,” he says with a smart-alec grin, “there’s always room for beer.”

What can I say? It was funny in college.