Talk Like A Physicist

Pretty accurate H2O tattoo (water

Hydrogen: one proton, one electron - check;

Oxygen (atomic number 8, atomic mass 16): you can see about 5 protons and 5 neutron, which is about right - you see half of the total from one side - check, two electrons in the s orbit of oxygen - check,

total eight electrons attributable to Oxygen and two for two hydrogen - check,

you see the molecular bonding between hydrogen and oxygen atoms - check, positioning of the hydrogen relative to oxygen - check,

wave-particle duality and localization stuff - not so perfect, but at least there is some fuzzy stuff there,

hydrogen shown as a perfect circle even in the presence of an Oxygen atom that it is bonding with, not perfect but hard to complain about it in light of other stuff that is right.

Jerry comments:

Enjoying a career measuring and predicting stream flow I spend a lot of time in, over and around water. I thought a tat of a water molecule would be just the thing. Talented tattoo artist Rose helped with advice and skill to make my first tattoo an enjoyable experience

Source: Via TattooBlog at Carl Zimmer’s blog Loom.

If you are interested in Science Tattoos, there is no place better then to visit Carl Zimmer’s Science Tattoo emporium. He recently moved his blog to Discover magazine; one more reason to give a plug to his blog with the new address.

Tuesday Tattoo: Magazine Tattoo

No, this is not photoshopped.

Marc Strömberg is a 22-year-old graphic designer in Ume, Sweden, and his leg is still sore. He creates record sleeves and posters for bands, and in his spare time he runs his own magazine, Tare Lugnt. Instead of publishing the latest edition in traditional paper and ink, he has had issue three entirely tattooed onto his left leg. The leg has now been photographed, and large-scale prints are due to go on display in Göteborg and Stockholm this month.

Source Tare Lugnt (which means “take it easy” in Swedish).

I don’t think I will ever remove a tattoo. Like I said, every tattoo is like a journal entry, and it represents different periods and places in my life.

Tuesday Physics Tattoo: Golden Ratio

Source http://exp.bmezine.com/

Tuesday Physics Tattoo: Pi Day edition

This is a remarkable tattoo of the Basel equation and Pi.

I wanted to post this tattoo in the Pi edition to show that the magical number Pi appears at the strangest of places. One would not have expected the summation of inverse squares of integers to add up to some combination related to Pi, but here it is.

This little baby is also due to Euler. In 1644 Mengoli asked if anyone could find a closed-form value (and prove it rigorously) for the infinite sum of the reciprocals of the squares. So, what is 1+1/4+1/9+1/16……. and so forth off to infinity. Contrary to intuition this series does not diverge to infinity. Although we are adding infinitely-many positive amounts together we still get a finite number. This is because the positive amounts that we are adding are getting smaller sufficiently fast. It was known that this sum was approximately 1.644. However, when Mengoli asked for a closed-form value he was looking for an EXACT expression, not a decimal approximation. In 1735 Euler found the closed-form solution. If you continue to Tattoo Number 4 part 2 you will see the sum.

Source Doctordani

More about Basel Function here.

Talking about the strangest places Pi appears, I wasn’t thinking of Pi being on PeppermintStripe’s lips. I bet she can recite 100 digits of Pi, easy! This is really cool.

Source: PeppermintStrips’s Deviant Art.

Tuesday Physics Tattoo : Jono’s Maxwell’s Equations

Love the bright red question mark for the Gauss’s law. It leave open the possibility of a magnetic monopole.

Especially since most physicists believe that the magnetic monopoles do exist.

If the magnetic monopoles do exist then the Gauss’s law (third equation) needs to be changed and I think Faraday’s law (second equation) will change too.

Maxwell’s equations tattoo. Source Osunick’s photostream

Equilibirum Tattoo

If you want an “equilibirum” tattoo - you can be very direct about it and just write it out, or you can have an yin-yang or some floral design.

But to show that you really UNDERSTAND what equilibirum means then do what Don Erdman did; get a tattoo of Cauchy’s relation.

My Equalibrium tattoo, needs some touch up next time I am in to get something new.

Alpha tattoo

Hyneck says

The meaning is very private. But it’s an alpha (?) if someone has problems to recognize it.

Source

Pure Pi and e Tattoo

Steve Vallis explains:

The symbol on the left of the image is pi and the symbol on the right is the chinese character for chaos. The dots signify the values of pi and e respectively with each row of dots equating to one digit of each number. I plan to have it extended another 3 or 4 lines lower in the future with the lines fading out to reinforce the infinite nature of the two numbers.

The whole tattoo represents three things to me mainly: infinity, chaos theory (sensitive dependence) and mathematics & patterns in nature. The symbol on the right of my body is Pi.

Tuesday Tattoo - 100 digits of Pi

Another in my series of “Once in a Blue Moon” portraits. This customer had the first 100 digits of Pi tattooed up his arm and shoulder. For those curious I only saw the first 73 of them, though he did offer to remove his shirt right there in the store. We really do have one of the most interesting, and coolest, customer bases. Now too bad I cannot remember which camera I was shooting that day. Think this was the Leica M3…

Credit : Pi by Zeb Andrews.

This is another view of the same Pi tatoo that we saw before:

Black ink tattoo - Euler identity

Euler’s Identity is one of the most fascinating mathematical equation. Interestingly, it also shows 9 concepts of math in a single equation: concepts of : 1, 0, pi, e, i, addition, multiplication, exponentiation, and equality.

Via Cory Doctrow’s Flickr.

Nicholas shared his math tattoo:

To really show the complexity of Euler identity, you need more than one dimensions.

Here is the Euler Identity, in invisible ink. You can only see it under UV lights.

Nicholas’s explains:

I got this tattoo about a month ago. Its a UV tattoo of e^(i pi/2) which using euler’s formula is i. I thought i as an invisible tattoo was a great idea. You could think of a black light as the complex plane.

Infinity Symbol tattoos - Tuesday Physics Tattoos

Infinity and cosmos

Infinite Music from quigoncody

Tuesday Physics Tattoo - Smith Chart

From Chris S’s website at UCSB

The SMITH chart is a graphical calculator that allows the relatively complicated mathematical calculations, which use complex algebra and numbers, to be replaced with geometrical constructs, and it allows us to see at a glance what the effects of altering the transmission line geometry will be.

Here is what a real Smith Chart looks like.

Source Chris’s UCSB website

Drake Equation (to estimate the number of extraterrestrial civilizations) tattoo

Now that we have found and seen actual planets on other stars, it is an appropriate time to discuss the Drake equation again.

The Drake equation attempts to estimate the number of extraterrestrial civilizations in our galaxy with which we might come in contact.

This has to be one of the most delightful tattoo that I have come across. It is a pictorial representation of the Drake Equation.

where:

N is the number of civilizations in our galaxy with which communication might be possible;

and

R* is the average rate of star formation in our galaxy
fp is the fraction of those stars that have planets
ne is the average number of planets that can potentially support life per star that has planets
fl is the fraction of the above that actually go on to develop life at some point
fi is the fraction of the above that actually go on to develop intelligent life
fc is the fraction of civilizations that develop a technology that releases detectable signs of their existence into space
L is the length of time such civilizations release detectable signals into space.

The tattoo above is a pictorial representation of the above seven factors. It starts out with a picture of galaxy and then each of the element of the equation is shown in a pictorial form.

Of course, our friends at XKCD have an extra factor:

Source of tattoo