# Beckhap's law

Top: a statement of Beckhap's law from the 2003, 25th anniversary edition of the book Murphy's law by Arthur Bloch.[1] Bottom: Visual and verbal depiction of Beckhap's law: screen shot of Cynthia, described as the "Superbowl of women", thinking to herself, in the 2000 film 100 Girls.

In laws, Beckhap's law (TR:41) (LH:4) (TL:45), aka "Peckham's law", is a Murphy's law style aphorism, which states that “beauty times brains equals a constant”.[2] A mathematical formulation of the "dumb blond" phenomena, extended to all variations of physical beauty.

## Overview

In 1970s, the motto that beauty times brains equals a constant was circulating; generally of the following formulation:

${\displaystyle {\text{beauty}}\times {\text{brains}}=k_{B}}$

where kB is the Beckhap constant. Said another way, beauty is inversely proportional to brains:

Symbolically, beauty B is inversely proportional to intelligence I:

${\displaystyle B\varpropto {\frac {1}{I}}}$

In other words, the greater the amount of physical "beauty" one is born with, or accrues at a given state of existence, the lower will be their intellectual level, i.e. "brains", as an adult, owing to the nature of the universe.

In 1977, Arthur Bloch. in his Murphy’s Law and Other Reasons Why Things Go Wrong, which reprinted into the 25th edition, included Beckhap's laws, after which Beckhap's became an underground cultural meme, so to say.[1]

### Proof

Description: A plot of the ranked data results, of the group "female science majors", from the 2002 study of 2,018 University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) college graduation photos, graduating classes of 1969 and 1972, showing that attractiveness is inversely proportion, on average, to intelligence, a finding which corroborates Beckhap's law. Key: P = psychology, B = biology, C = chemistry, and M = mathematics, each with 41, 20, 13, and 21 students, respectively. Similarly, A = physical attractiveness (of group); on a scale of 7.0 = most physically attractive to 1.0 = least physically attractive; and I = intellectual difficulty (of degree); on a scale of 100 = most intellectually difficult to 10 = least intellectually difficult.

In 2002, Libb Thims conducted a study, wherein he had one group of people (N=14) estimated intellectual difficulty of college degrees, obtained by the University of Illinois, Chicago (UIC) graduating classes of 1969 and 1972 [students: 2,018], on a scale of 1 (easiest) to 100 (hardest), which he then plotted, on the ordinate, against the estimated, by another group of people (N=2) average physical attractiveness, on the abscissa, of the graduation photos of those who obtained those degrees, on a scale of 1 (least attractive) to 7 (most attractive), finding, therein corroboration of Beckhap's law.[3] Any college person can verify this for themselves visually by taking first a psychology or literature class, noting the aesthetics of the class, then taking a mathematics or a chemistry class, and noting the aesthetics there, the note the intellectual difficulty of each subject as a function of hours worked.[4]

Thims then correlated beauty to enthalpy and brains to entropy to yield, via derivation, that the formation energy of a person is a function of beauty and brains, or of enthalpy and entropy, respectively.

## Quotes

The following are related quotes:

“I'm not stupid. I know I got things easy. Guys will pretty much do anything for me because of the way I look (referring to a guy who did her term paper). It's a curse. You see, nothing is a challenge for me. Every thing is made easy. And if I ever actually do it something on my own, then everyone assumes I got there because of the way I look. It sucks!”
— Michael Davis (2000), 100 Girls (character: Cynthia, aka “super bowl of women”)
Thims influenced me in my ‘atheism’, my ‘determinism’, I became interested in thermodynamics, I discovered the work of Goethe, by understanding of ‘intelligence’ changed, and in my work ethic (work hard, study hard, don’t waste your time). I’m unlearning the idea that I’m ‘alive’. No thing is. I learned about Beckhap’s law, the influence of latitudes on intellect, the way in which books and the search for self-taught knowledge change the entropy of the body.”
— Zadquiel (2021), “Reply to how Thims has influenced him, as a top 5 influence”, Twitter, May 4[5]

## End matter

### References

1. (a) Bloch, Arthur. (2003). Murphy’s Law: 25th Anniversary Edition (Beckhap’s law, pg. 136). Perigee.
(b) Arthur Bloch - Wikipedia.
2. Beckhap’s law – Anvari.org.
3. Beckhap’s law proof – Hmolpedia 2020.
4. Zadquiel (4 May 2021) – Twitter.