Carl Zimmer's Science Tattoo Emporium

Tagged

Paul writes, "I have a degree in Computer Science, and I work with RFID (or at least I did till recently)." On his Livejournal blog, he adds, "For the curious, this is an Alien Technology's European model Gen 1 Squiggle RFID tag. It's actually copper in color and about six centimetres long. I scanned it and blew it up to a bit over twice it's original size, and changed its color to black."

Carl: RFID stands for radio frequency identification. RFID tags, which are embedded in many of the products sold today in stores, are programmed to store information about them. To get the information, you point an RFID reader at the tag and release a burst of radio waves. The energy from the waves powers up the tag, which then sends back a signal of its own. Paul's RFID tattoo says a lot about him now, but, if he wanted, it could say a lot more. Maybe too much.

Word of the Day: Astrarium

Lauren writes, "I'm not a scientist by trade, but I am, in fact, a huge nerd. I study 18th-century British literature, including scientific literature. It was a wild time to be in science. It was also the heyday of the orrery, which provided the initial impetus for my tattoo. (Orreries, as it turned out, involve too many circles to make them feasible for inking on a large scale.) Then I discovered & fell in love with the comprehensive diagrams in Giovanni de'Dondi's 1364 Il Tractatus Astarii--the plans for the first famous astrarium. My backpiece is of the Mercury wheelwork. Of course, you couldn't track Mercury with it--de'Dondi followed Ptolemy--but I find his Astrarium a lovely & impressive testament to human ingenuity & curiosity."

Carl: It took sixteen years for de'Dondi's astrarium to be built, but it was later destroyed. See a reconstruction here. And read about de'Dondi here.

Patented Ink

Abraham writes: "My fascination with Tesla started in elementary school, when my science teacher compared Tesla and Edison. I decided to pay my tribute to the wizard with a patent drawing on an electric magnetic motor, submitted by Tesla in the late 1800's."

Crashing Waves

Aarn writes: "as a student of electrical and mechanical engineering I kept running into sine waves and the unit circle, and came to realize how important it is. After about a year of digging and trying to find the right artist and the right technical drawings to illustrate this concept, I settled on two images which at one time or another were featured in scientific american magazine. The inner arm is a sine wave as it relates to the unit circle, and I continued the wave theme on the whole arm piece with the outer image which is the superposition of two waves. In the background is kind of a broken-out grid that wraps around my arm and onto my shoulder and has other solid and dotted lines in it."

Shouldering The Risks

Steve writes, "I got my two tattoos the summer after I graduated from the University of Massachusetts with a degree in Chemical and Nuclear Engineering. On the left shoulder is the recognizable radiation warning trefoil, and on the right is the U.S. Army's hazard symbol for chemical weapons (I interpret it more as a general chemical warning symbol). Some would say that hazard symbols like these represent a desire to for isolation, but I like to think of them as my two pillars of training. That no matter what happens to me I'll always have my knowledge of these two sciences to rest upon."

Tuning In

Skip Arey writes, "I am very devoted to the radio art and decided to show my devotion by way of Body Art. The tattoo is a copy of a schematic diagram of a basic Crystal Radio taken from page 132 of Practical Wireless Telegraphy by Elmer Bucher published in 1921."

Electronics

"I was hoping you could put this tattoo up as your flicker page is missing any tattoo's of electrical engineering.

This tattoo is the schematic for the reference point of electricity. I just think of it as the source of electricity. Its really either the point at which you consider voltage to be 0, or in this pictures case, the physical connection to the earth (hence the lower calf). Electronics has been my passion for as long as I can remember, and I feel like this tattoo doesn't do it justice. So I plan on getting another one to incorporate my passion for electronics and my trans-humanism beliefs."