Tattoos are one of the ways the usually sterile, boring nature of science and math can be transformed into an exciting, sexy, exhilarating subject. Carl Zimmer, a science writer who presented at NECSS last weekend, keeps a compilation of these delightfully geeky designs in a section of his blog, which he calls The Science Tattoo Emporium. There are a lot of them. He’ll be publishing a book with the contributions entitled Science Ink, to be released in October.
Do you have any science tattoos? What cool geek tattoos have you seen? Do you think that tattoos about science make the subject more badass, or are they just geeky and ill-advised?
The ART Inquisition (or AI) is a question posed to you, the Mad Art Lab community. Look for it to appear Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays at 3pm ET.
I’ve seen a pi on the back of a neck. I liked that one. Simple, understaded, geeky.
I once saw a woman walking down the sidewalk with the Schrodinger wave equation tattooed on her arm. That was pretty unusual, I thought. I would have loved to been able to ask her about it.
On principle I have to take issue with the statement “the usually sterile, boring nature of science and math”. My impression was that MAL was about fighting this unfair stereotype, so I’m sure you only used the phrase unthinkingly. Yes, there is boring and sterile science and math, but that’s not either’s nature.
I think sciency tattoos look fun, but personally I can’t think of a thing I’d like permanently etched on my skin. I like to have full freedom to change my mind about anything.
Yes, apologies for that wording. By using the terms “science and math” I was really referring to “the way science and math are portrayed.” I had considered editing the wording, and looking back, that’s what I should have done. I’d hope it would be clear that I don’t consider science and math to be boring by nature; otherwise my contributions to this site would appear to all be some extended form of masochism.
I have a Skepchick inspired tattoo with the retro atom design but I think I need more….
I have a star on my upper left bicep that was taken from my dad’s collector’s edition of the Lord of the Rings. Not a science tattoo, but very geeky and a nice tribute to my dad.
I don’t have any tattoos, but I have a friend who has a tattoo of the Pioneer star map. It is my favorite for some reason.
When (if) I finish my PhD, I plan on getting Newton’s Second Law tattooed on the inside of my left wrist. Since my entire career (mechanical engineering) is pretty much based on that one equation. 🙂
My physics professor showed us href=”http://talklikeaphysicist.com/2009/tuesday-physics-tattoo-jonos-maxwells-equations/”this a few days ago:
They are a tattoo of Maxwell’s equations, which describe electricity and magnetism.
Sorry if the link doesn’t work, I’m new here.
Welcome to the lab nicolas!