Carl Zimmer's Science Tattoo Emporium

That About Covers It

MLR writes: "The Tree of Life--carbon, glucose, light, DNA, and the golden rectangle.  A tattoo by Kevin Riley. On the chest of a PhD student in molecular biology."

Atom of the Future

Alan, "After much consideration, I decided to get an atom tattoo.  But what atom?  Given that I'm an graduate student in organic chemistry at the University of Michigan, carbon seemed like the obvious choice.  It also has the advantage of being small enough not to look too crowded.  I went for a retro 50's Jetsons sort of look.  Believe it or not, the general shape (though not the coloring) is based on a piece of Microsoft Office clip-art."

Weirdness, Quantum-style

Brittany writes, "Someday i hope to be a wacky, flannel-sportin' physicist. my tattoo is schroedinger's equation for the wavefunction of a particle. i chose this equation because its elegance & symmetry reflect that of our multiverse, & also because it describes the fundamental source of "quantum weirdness." time travel, quantum computers...no matter what happens in my life, there is an infinitely Glorious Plan swirling all about us....I would be honored to be included among the ranks of badass scientists all over the world. oh, & if you have any pull with any preeminent physicists, tell brian greene to return my fan mail! :]"

Subatomic Doodling

Zach writes: "It is a half sleeve up my upper right arm based around an image taken by one of the CERN bubble chambers. It is based on this image. I first saw that image my freshman year of college. It had the sublime, simple beauty that only something made of math and science can have. It stuck with me for 8 more years before I actually decided to get it etched into me. Oddly enough, on Valentine's Day. I guess it was my Valentine's to physics and science. Oh, and when people ask who drew it, I always respond 'God.'"

Fundamental Fluid

Drew, an oceanography graduate student, writes: "This, on my leg, is the incompressible form of the conservation of mass equation in a fluid, also known as the continuity equation. When people ask what it means, I say it defines flow.  Sometimes I say it means you should have studied more physics, but that is only when I am feeling like being funny.  What it means in more detail is that, for an incompressible fluid, the partial derivative of the velocity of the fluid in the three spatial dimensions must sum to zero.  It therefore concisely states the fundamental nature of a fluid.

"My advisor took this picture, and I swear he is obsessed (in a good way) with this tattoo.  He is giving a talk at Woods Hole next week as he is the recipient of an award, and he is planning to show off 'how quantitative scripps students are' which i think is hilarious and only slightly mortifying.  Speaking of mortifying, it is slightly mortifying to be sending this email at all--I have to admit I am a little embarrassed.  It is definitely the most vain thing i have done today.  I do have an ulterior motive which I have no problem admitting: I want to stake a claim on this particular piece.  I guess it might be a little lame to want to claim ownership over something so silly but there it is and I guess at least I can admit it."

Things Come Together (By Falling Apart)

Abigail writes, "My first year of college, I wanted to be an English major, and I took Intro Chemistry to fill the science requirement. The brief unit on thermodynamics made me fall totally in love. Entropy made sense to me - scientifically, philosophically. I became a Chemistry major and love every second of it. I got the tattoo to mark my rite of passage - Entropy going both ways, with its symble delta-S in the middle, all supported in the roots of Yggdrasil, the world-tree of Norse mythology (harking back to my English-lit days)."

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."

The Universe Is Pocked

"Backstory: my parents met at a wedding on July 20, 1969, a very important date in the annals of human scientific achievement - the night humans first set foot on the moon. All my life, I have had a fascination with the moon not just as a tangible, graspable place (science fiction made real) but as a symbol for what the human race can achieve when we apply the best abilities of the best minds."

Carl: The moon was science's first glimpse of cosmic imperfection. For centuries, natural philosophers declared the heavens to be beyond decay and change. Everyone could see that the mooon was irregularly colored, but they explained it away in various ways--perhaps the reflection of the Earth itself, or the glint of sunlight bouncing off of celestial vapors. But when Galileo turned his telescope towards the moon, he saw clearly the moon's pock-like craters, changing with the shifting shadows. The moon is not timeless, but mature, its battered face the sign of experience; astronomy no longer has the purity of mathematics, but the fascinating quirks of biography.

Macro meets micro

"It synthesize the union of the Macro (Universe: c) and the Micro (Quantum: hbar) cosmos."--Otavio

Flickr source

Einstein v. Newton

"Here is a picture of my friend who is completing his physics degree this year and his awesome tattoos."--Joshua Olson

Time dilation

j-rad writes, "The time dilation formula is over my heart and represents my personal belief in life: the faster you go, the more you get to see and the more you get to live. maximum intensity and maximum velocity at all times for maximum lifetime experience per life."

Entropy, etc.

"I'm currently a PhD student in chemistry, specializing in polymer synthesis. I got this tattoo at the very beginning of my graduate studies (almost three years ago), for many reasons (one of which was to keep me from ever backing out :)) The tattoo is of electromagnetic radiation that spirals into a polymer chain, which forms an "S" for entropy and then unravels ... kind of how we all do. It exhibits my love of science, chemistry, and my general beliefs on life, the universe, and so on."

Black Hole Physics

Bart writes, ""I'm just happy that the artist now understands what a Swartzchild Radius is."

Bohr atom

Nedsferatu writes, "I studied nanotechnology in school and got my enormous bohr atom during that time."