Math/Physics Tattoo Idea Request - Warren

[Kurdt]

Dude everyones stumped. I wish you could remember what it was you were thinking when you first thought it was a good idea. How about some of the obscure spherical harmonics?

 

[mgb_phys]

Can you link the blog?

Last post in his thread ( discussing a similair xkcd cartoon )
http://forums.xkcd.com/viewtopic.php?t=2739

I assume everyone here is a fan of www.xkcd.org

 

[robphy]

One last suggestion:

Pascal's Theorem
"if a hexagon is inscribed in a conic, then the three points at which the pairs of opposite sides meet, lie on a straight line"

You don't have to draw the letters and the external segments AG and CG. Just draw the circle and the six chords.
(Here KJL is collinear, regardless of where A,B,C,D,E,F are on the circle.)

Play with this applet by moving the blue circles around the circle. You may want to turn on the Line of Colinearity.
http://www.cut-the-knot.org/Curriculum/Geometry/Pascal.shtml


I was recently interested in this theorem...and am somewhat fascinated by it.

 

[chroot]

Oh my god... do I really need to say, for the sixth time, that I don't want anything pictorial? Maybe I should just lock the thread. *sigh*

- Warren

 

[Cyrus]

Hey warren, you should try one of a star inside a circle with a bicycle around it.

 

[jtbell]

Well, I was hoping I'd find some clever, clean, attractive design that is, quite literally, incomprehensible to laypeople, and not even identifiable as a bit of physics geekery. I want it to appear more like a curious line-art design, yet have a deeper meaning that I'd enjoy explaining when people asked.

Maybe a Feynman diagram?

 

[Monique]

How about interference? Or do you count that as pictorial..

http://www.paulisageek.com/school/cs348b/2pt_interference-intensity.png
http://www.ottisoft.com/interfer.htm

 

[neutrino]

Hey chroot, just came across this at BackReaction: http://www.scienceblogs.com/loom/2007/08/06/branded_with_science.php

Lot of pictorial stuff, but maybe one will inspire a line-art.

 

[tommyburgey]

Get:
"I like pi(the symbol)" On your forehead

 

[zoobyshoe]

Well, I was hoping I'd find some clever, clean, attractive design that is, quite literally, incomprehensible to laypeople, and not even identifiable as a bit of physics geekery. I want it to appear more like a curious line-art design, yet have a deeper meaning that I'd enjoy explaining when people asked.

Of course, I have a long history of attracting the wrong kind of attention: I bought a sports car thinking it might get some looks from women, but instead it only attracts high-school boys. Maybe I should just stop while I'm ahead.

This sort of thing? :

http://www.ifca.unican.es/tau98/symbol_tau_index.jpg

http://images.google.com/imgres?img...l&start=108&gbv=2&ndsp=18&svnum=10&hl=en&sa=N
-----------
Getting a tattoo would automatically signal that you are the type of person who gets tattoos. I'm not sure what that means, exactly, but it's something along the lines of demonstrating that you're in line with the bolder, edgier element of your contemporaries.

I don't think it's necessary to actually have a tattoo to do that. You can approach any tattooed lady you please and start a conversation and she'll have no idea if you have one or not: many aren't visible in street clothes. All that's important is to show positive interest in her tattoos: listen intently to the story of the meaning of her tats, and nod approvingly. If she asks about you, just tell her the truth, which is that you're in the process of deciding what to get, and you can describe the kind of tat you're looking for, just as you did above. You don't have to have a tattoo to be a tattoo type person. You just have to approve of them and be planning on getting one. The fact you haven't settled on one with the right degree of non-obvious meaning only adds integrity to your image, since they're supposed to be very personal and signifigant, and most who have them show distain for people who rush to get unplanned, off-the-shelf tattoos simply to have them.

 

[angel 42]

think about the word physics in other languages like japanies language or arabic...

 

[Kurdt]

Everyone gets Japanese or Arabic. Thats why I was incredibly sad and got Kryptonian.

http://img165.imageshack.us/img165/6646/tattoodesign1si1.png

 

[Winzer]

This doesn't meet any of your requirements but I think it would be funny if you got Navier Stokes equation for compressable/non-compressable fluids tattooed across your chest

 

[K.J.Healey]

 

[mbrmbrg]

chroot, if you're looking for something small and simple that could be mistaken for a design rather than obviously being an equation or something like that, maybe you should consider any of the various symbols for physical constants. Like hbar or epsilon naught or something.

I thought this was the best idea so far. Chroot, don't you have a favorite symbol? (asked she, as if clearly everyone had a favorite physical/mathematical symbol. Sigh. But this is PHYSICSForums, after all...)

 

[Danger]

How about a nice, simple line drawing of a Penrose triangle?

The one that I'm planning to get will be on my inner forearm, so as not to be really blatant. It's my own modification of something that Clifford D. Simak (I think so; might have been one of the other veteran SF writers) used to draw when he signed autographs. His was a 'Q' with an arrow through it. Mine is a balloon font '?' in chrome yellow with a crimson arrow through it. The message is the same for either one: 'ask the next question'.

 

[B. Elliott]

Ever since Chroot started this thread, I seriously started thinking about getting a tattoo. It's been in the back of my mind for quite some time now but never thought of anything that I know I wouldn't grow tired of or regret later on. That is, till a couple of ideas popped into my head.

The first, my families coat of arms which I will get eventually, but there's one in particular that really started to pull at me. I've thought about getting this one on either my left or right shoulder blade region at approximately eight or nine inches in diameter... size mainly depending what it takes to make the symbols and Latin legible.

So, what are you' think? Too much?

 

[Moonbear]

I don't know if it's just the quality of the scan or not, but might be indicative of how well it will appear on skin too...I cannot at all make out what is in the middle. Looks like a bunch of scribbles. Definitely something you'd want to ask the tattoo artist about before committing to it...CAN they make that legible, and make all those circles look right?

 

[animalcroc]

a math professor at UCSD has pi on her ankle/foot area.

 

[Math Jeans]

Well. As many math people love spicy food, I figured you could get an armband tatoo made up of a capsaicin molecule.

http://www.thehotzoneonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/11/800px-capsaicin_chemical_structure.png

At first glance it will look just like a regular armband tatoo, but anyone obsessed with spicy foods or any other person obsessed with science will know what it is. Its perfect!

 

[Chris Hillman]

Some really bad ideas

Hmmm, good idea. A decorative, prettied-up Mobius strip might look quite good.

The logo of my alma mater (Mathematics, University of Washington) used to be a banana slug crawling over an "Escherized" Moebius strip. I can't say I care much for the current logo either.

How about the Coxeter-Dynkin diagram for $E_8$? The Petersen graph? The digraph illustrating the Golden-Mean shift? An illustration of a Moebius transformation (elliptic, parabolic, or hyperbolic according to taste)? (See Needham, Visual Complex Analysis.) Or Indra's pearls?

Had you not imposed such space requirements, I'd suggest a portion of the Penrose rhombic tiling, or a small Ramanujan graph. And had you an infinite amount of multidimensional-dimensional skin, I'd suggest the Leech lattice. Or the Erdos-Rado graph Even better, an example of the most important theorem in mathematics, the Szemeredi lemma.

I think anything not very abstract will look terrible. (Actually, I think any tatoo will look terrible--- but perhaps I should have kept that to myself?)

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Actually, I think any tatoo will look terrible

yep.

 

[Chris Hillman]

Emboldened, a further suggestion

yep.

Maybe someone should start a thread, "What are the Visual Icons of Mathematics?" (In another post, I mentioned one of the "Icons of Chaotic Dynamics".)

 

[Gale]

I like math jeans. That's clever.

I've always wanted a math tatoo. I think I'm going to gussy up euler's equation where theta= pi. Or I've considered some representation of the golden ratio like maybe da vinci's vitruvian man.

I used to joke with my mum that I'd tattoo my inner thigh. Then it would be a sort of test for future boyfriends... strictly pass/fail of course.

 

[devil-fire]

Ever since Chroot started this thread, I seriously started thinking about getting a tattoo. It's been in the back of my mind for quite some time now but never thought of anything that I know I wouldn't grow tired of or regret later on. That is, till a couple of ideas popped into my head.

The first, my families coat of arms which I will get eventually, but there's one in particular that really started to pull at me. I've thought about getting this one on either my left or right shoulder blade region at approximately eight or nine inches in diameter... size mainly depending what it takes to make the symbols and Latin legible.

So, what are you' think? Too much?

that much fine detail would be really tough to put in a tattoo. to make it look readable, you would need that over almost your whole back

 

[StatusX]

Get a tattoo of a loop that isn't null-homotopic (taking the topology of the skin to be a torus, including the digestive track).

 

[mathwonk]

you have to be kidding. how about a tattoo of kuranishi?

 

[Moonbear]

The logo of my alma mater (Mathematics, University of Washington) used to be a banana slug crawling over an "Escherized" Moebius strip. I can't say I care much for the current logo either.

Go slugs! Sorry, I just didn't know that was the logo there, and can't stop laughing at the idea of a slug as a mascot, and worse, a slug moving in an endless loop going nowhere.

 

[Chris Hillman]

Go slugs! Sorry, I just didn't know that was the logo there, and can't stop laughing at the idea of a slug as a mascot, and worse, a slug moving in an endless loop going nowhere.

Now I wish I'd kept a copy of that logo!

This might be a "don't ask unless you really want to know" kinda thing, but what's the most memorable tatoo you've spotted on the operating table?

 

[Gravitino]

What about placing WMAP as a tattoo? You could also use a trap of neutron star near black hole. Or a funny picture that quarks want to escape from each other, but strong force does not allow it (confinement). One can find many ideas of this type.

 

[Poop-Loops]

My friend is a chemistry major and has a bunch of chemical formulas (like the ones with the lines connecting the element letters together) for the neuroreceptors for pain and pleasure on his arms.

 

[Holocene]

I once toyed with the idea of getting the "Pioneer Plaque" tattooed on my back.

Well, as it turned out, there were quite a few pics on the internet of people who had done just that. And here I thought I had an original idea...

 

[pharmer]

I have a tattoo on each shoulder's deltoid. I designed them myself using MathCad and Photoshop. The right shoulder has a 3D perspective of a gaussian photon, four and a half wavelengths, the lobes a solid black for the magnetic field, a deep red for the electric field. I had wanted thin line vectors in each lobe, but the tattoo artist refused to attempt it, saying that they would badly blend together in a few years. It's seven inches across (I have big shoulders) but could easily reduce to three. The left shoulder is a 3D perspective of the Periodic Table with a diamondback snake wrapped around it in the shape of the infinity symbol. The snake's eye has h-bar in it. It is about eight inches wide.

It seems to me the best tattoos are relatively simple (it's easy to put in too many details), even if it's still sophisticated. I may have put a bit too much detail into the Planck Snake, but the photon is perfect. I am happy with both. Instead of wearing my religion on my sleeve (I don't have one), I wear my profession on my shoulders!

Take your time designing your unique tattoo. You'll be stuck with it.

 

[fourier jr]

i can't believe nobody mentioned euler's equation. maybe it isn't as cool as i think it is

 

[Cyrus]