After some exploring of the area, they come across three rations of canned food that they all agree will allow them to survive for a few more days. Naturally, they all decide that each of them should have one of the three cans of food; unfortunately, none of them possess anything with which to open them.
The engineer promptly begins to throw his can as hard as he can against the wall of the mine, over and over, until it somehow breaks open. He proceeds to devour his meal in satisfaction.
Meanwhile, the physicist proceeds to analyze the structure of the can, looking for any potential weak spots in it to exploit. After some searching, he notices a flaw in his can and uses that to pry open the can, happy that he can also eat and survive a bit longer.
The mathematician, however, is a bit saddened. After thinking some about what he wants to do to try and open the can, he proclaims out loud to the other men:
"Suppose the can is open."
