There was a mad scientist ( a mad ...social... scientist ) who
kidnapped  three colleagues, an engineer, a physicist, and a
mathematician, and locked  each of them in seperate cells with plenty
of canned food and water but no can opener.

A month later, returning, the mad scientist went to the engineer's
cell and  found it long empty.  The engineer had constructed a can
opener from pocket trash, used aluminum shavings and dried sugar to
make an explosive, and escaped.

The physicist had worked out the angle necessary to knock the lids off
the tin  cans by throwing them against the wall.  She was developing a
good pitching arm and a new quantum theory.

The mathematician had stacked the unopened cans into a surprising
solution to the kissing problem; his desiccated corpse was propped
calmly against a wall, and this was inscribed on the floor in blood:

        Theorem: If I can't open these cans, I'll die.

        Proof: assume the opposite...