Math/Physics Tattoo Idea Request - Warren

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The discussion revolves around the search for a tattoo design that incorporates math or physics symbolism while meeting specific aesthetic criteria. The desired tattoo should appear as an abstract artistic design rather than a straightforward equation, be relatively small (around 3" x 3"), avoid large solid color patches, and not be overly pictorial or diagrammatic. Participants suggest various ideas, including a Mobius strip, Calabi-Yau manifold, and symbols for physical constants like h-bar or epsilon naught. There's a significant emphasis on the importance of the artist's interpretation and rendering of the design. The conversation also touches on the personal significance of tattoos, the cultural implications of getting one, and the challenges of finding a design that is both meaningful and visually appealing. Participants express skepticism about the quality of many tattoos seen in society and discuss the potential for regret over impulsive decisions. Overall, the thread highlights the complexities of choosing a tattoo that balances personal significance with artistic expression.
  • #51
dlgoff said:
I was wondering. Do you really need an artist? Couldn't you design something yourself; create a computer file suitable for a numeric controlled tatoo machine?

There is a great cartoon (in German) of a tattoo machine writing
"error dragon.jpeg not found" across someones back!
I can't find it on google - don't try searching for "file not found"
 
Physics news on Phys.org
  • #52
I forgot I invented the tattoo robot :blushing:

EDIT: Damn the advert on that page is for my university as well. I don't believe it.
 
  • #55
robphy said:
This might be cool:
http://www.neatorama.com/2006/04/23/chameleon-blacklight-tattoo/
http://neatorama.cachefly.net/images/2006-04/glow-in-the-dark-tattoo.jpg

I don't like this work, but I like the concept. Instead of bones like this, I would make it the entire inside of the arm. Veins, muscles, etc. Make it look as if you're really seeing inside your own arm. That would be a really neat effect. (But very drastic).
 
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  • #56
  • #57
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.
 
  • #58
Honestly if I were ever to get a math tattoo I would never get one containing any symbols, numbers, etc. at all. I would just choose one that had a high degree of symmetry that also had a cool design. There is plenty of math behind highly symmetrical objects.
 
  • #60
robphy said:
This might be cool:
http://www.neatorama.com/2006/04/23/chameleon-blacklight-tattoo/
http://neatorama.cachefly.net/images/2006-04/glow-in-the-dark-tattoo.jpg

My boss' daughter has one of those glow-in-the-dark tattoos on her forehead of all places. :rolleyes: The only good thing about it is that you won't see it except under black light. :rolleyes:
 
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  • #61
Well, you being a computer-geek-type person, how about 1+1 = 1? :biggrin:
 
  • #62
mgb_phys said:
Not exactly subtle, but better than the usual junk tattoo'ed on womens backs

:smile::smile::smile:You're killing me
 
  • #63
According to a blog by one of the models, the title is
"16 things you understand and 4 you don't"

They are (left-right) equations for GR, E&M, Mechanics, and Quantum mechanics.
 
  • #64
Can you link the blog? I'm assuming it was just a collusion of tequila and magic marker making for an unsual evening.

So far, I'm pretty dismayed at my physics tatto choices. :rolleyes: Maybe I should just pierce my face in twelve places instead.

- Warren
 
  • #65
chroot said:
So far, I'm pretty dismayed at my physics tatto choices. :rolleyes: Maybe I should just pierce my face in twelve places instead.

:smile: If you do, remind me not to ever stand behind you in line at the airport metal detectors. :biggrin:

Would there be any cool looking rotational motion equations you could insert into a bicycle wheel, or some other way tie into your other interests? That would make it more than just a dorky equation, but a segue into your other interests, which might be more fruitful to discuss with random members of the public who ask about the tattoo.
 
  • #66
Moonbear said:
Would there be any cool looking rotational motion equations you could insert into a bicycle wheel, or some other way tie into your other interests?

Interesting idea, but mucking about with a bicycle wheel and then going 40 mph on it is almost a form of suicide.

That would make it more than just a dorky equation, but a segue into your other interests, which might be more fruitful to discuss with random members of the public who ask about the tattoo.

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.

- Warren
 
  • #67
chroot said:
Interesting idea, but mucking about with a bicycle wheel and then going 40 mph on it is almost a form of suicide.
<<<<groan>>>> I see you've been taking joke writing lessons from Ivan. :rolleyes:


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.

:smile: Oh, you're probably getting some looks from women, but they're probably more of the "I'm sorry you feel you need to compensate for something with a sports car" looks. :-p Sure, there are some women who would be all over a sports car, but for the most part, it's men who are into sports cars, not women. You'll get many more women noticing you while you're bent over on the bike in those spandex shorts, you just don't know it because they're all behind you. :wink: :-p
 
  • #68
Moonbear said:
Oh, you're probably getting some looks from women, but they're probably more of the "I'm sorry you feel you need to compensate for something with a sports car" looks. :-p

Oh no, I usually ride with the convertible top down and with no pants, just to make sure they don't misjudge me.

And actually, I know of a number of women who have developed a sort of spandex fetish after watching the Tour de France. http://www.cyclingnews.com/photos/2004/worlds04/u23rr/7715-Poland.jpg

- Warren
 
  • #69
Moonbear said:
I see you've been taking joke writing lessons from Ivan. :rolleyes:

And that wasn't even a joke! I guess that means Ivan's jokes aren't even distinguishable from statements that aren't intended to be funny? :smile:

- Warren
 
  • #70
chroot said:
And actually, I know of a number of women who have developed a sort of spandex fetish after watching the Tour de France. http://www.cyclingnews.com/photos/2004/worlds04/u23rr/7715-Poland.jpg

- Warren

:bugeye: Indeed, spandex doesn't hide much. :blushing:
 
  • #71
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?
 
  • #73
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"

Pascal.gif

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.
 
  • #74
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
 
  • #75
Hey warren, you should try one of a star inside a circle with a bicycle around it. :smile:
 
  • #76
chroot said:
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?
 
  • #77
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
 
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  • #78
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.
 
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  • #79
Get:
"I like pi(the symbol)" On your forehead
 
  • #80
chroot said:
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.
 
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  • #81
think about the word physics in other languages like japanies language or arabic...
 
  • #82
Everyone gets Japanese or Arabic. Thats why I was incredibly sad and got Kryptonian.

http://img165.imageshack.us/img165/6646/tattoodesign1si1.png
 
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  • #83
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:smile::smile:
 
  • #84
penguin.jpg
 
  • #85
hypnagogue said:
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...)
 
  • #86
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'.
 
  • #87
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.

aristotle_cosmo.gif


So, what are you' think? Too much?
 
  • #88
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?
 
  • #89
a math professor at UCSD has pi on her ankle/foot area.
 
  • #90
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!
 
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  • #91
Some really bad ideas

chroot said:
Hmmm, good idea. :cool: 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 :wink: 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?)
 
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  • #92
Chris Hillman said:
Actually, I think any tatoo will look terrible

yep.
 
  • #93
Emboldened, a further suggestion

Ivan Seeking said:
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".)
 
  • #94
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.
 
  • #95
B. Elliott said:
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.

aristotle_cosmo.gif


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
 
  • #96
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).
 
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  • #97
you have to be kidding. how about a tattoo of kuranishi?
 
  • #98
Chris Hillman said:
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.

:smile: Go slugs! :smile: 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. :smile:
 
  • #99
Moonbear said:
:smile: Go slugs! :smile: 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. :smile:

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

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?
 
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  • #100
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.
 

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