What does the expression 'you can shake a bunsen burner at' mean?

Question

I am reading the following article https://www.oxford-royale.co.uk/articles/read-enhance-general-knowledge.html . In the first paragraph there's the following sentence:> You’ve memorised more formulae than you can shake a bunsen burner at. What does the expression `you can shake a bunsen burner at` mean? Is it an idiom?Thank you very much for your attention.

Answer 1

That expression comes from the idiom "more _________ than you can shake a stick at," which simply means a lot of "__________."

In this article, the author took that idiom and put in the phrase "bunsen burner" instead of "stick," since the passage is talking about a problem that occurs in the study of engineering (bunsen burners are used in the study of science), to add some humor to the article and make it a little more colorful.

Answer 2