Awesome science tattoos

August 8, 2007 11:49 AM

Awesome science tattoos.
posted by GuyZero (50 comments total)

What better way to commit to a life of celibacy than to have the periodic table of the elements tattooed on yourself.
posted by troybob at 11:53 AM on August 8, 2007 [3 favorites]

So....ambivalent....science rules....tattoos do not.....what....to do....

Someone should make temporary science tattoos.

Interesting that my thought for most of them was "awesome science!" but for the lisp one my first thought was "I hope there's no bug in that". Good ol' software engineering instincts.
posted by DU at 11:54 AM on August 8, 2007

What better way to commit to a life of celibacy than to have the periodic table of the elements tattooed on yourself.

Having an enormous spider tattooed on yourself.
posted by DU at 11:56 AM on August 8, 2007

Wow, these really put the poor pocket protector and calculator on the belt to shame.
posted by caddis at 11:59 AM on August 8, 2007

What better way to commit to a life of celibacy than to have the periodic table of the elements tattooed on yourself.

Umm... BSOD tattoo.
posted by LordSludge at 12:01 PM on August 8, 2007

What better way to commit to a life of celibacy than to have the periodic table of the elements tattooed on yourself.

Seriously? When I saw that, my first thought was, "Oh, damn. I bet that dude gets so much play." Ladies Love Cool Germanium.
posted by Greg Nog at 12:02 PM on August 8, 2007 [2 favorites]

I think both science and tattoos are cool. But if you get a science tattoo just for the geek chic of it and don't bother with making it aesthetically pleasing then you're not much better off than the people who jumped on the Tasmanian Devil bandwagon in the 90s.

Case in point, the periodic table on a forearm is distracting and ugly, although for what it's worth I'm guessing that it was faked as part of an "ingenious cheat sheet" punchline.
posted by Riki tiki at 12:04 PM on August 8, 2007

What better way to commit to a life of celibacy than to have the periodic table of the elements tattooed on yourself.

I thought geekiness is in.
posted by wsg at 12:05 PM on August 8, 2007

OK, this one is kind of hot.
posted by T.D. Strange at 12:06 PM on August 8, 2007

Umm... BSOD tattoo.

Geez.. couldn't have gone with a nice, tasteful C:\> ?

Has anybody tatooed OS X's kernel panic screen on themselves yet?
posted by Devils Rancher at 12:13 PM on August 8, 2007

Is Schrodinger's Cat alive, or are you just happy to see me?
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 12:21 PM on August 8, 2007 [3 favorites]

I quite liked the dragon dna one at the bottom
posted by zeoslap at 12:31 PM on August 8, 2007

What if they discover new elements? I guess he can always tack them on, but the ink won't match exactally...

I'm very much liking the look of the ATP one...

The LISP one is a bit, I dunno, not cool. Too many parenthesis.
posted by jeffamaphone at 12:31 PM on August 8, 2007

I've always told myself that if I ever got a tattoo it would be a semi-obscure science-related one. I'm was afraid that one of those pictures would be of my perfect tattoo and I would be reduced to copying it, but none were very inspiring.

But I did like the periodic table. That dude rocks.
posted by mrnutty at 12:33 PM on August 8, 2007

The LISP one is a bit, I dunno, not cool. Too many parenthesis.

Also, all the math nerds with their closed form expression tattoos beat him up for his lunch money.
posted by Gary at 12:44 PM on August 8, 2007

The tat on the right of this page is the one I covet - it's a schematic for the simplest radio receiver possible.
posted by action man bow-tie at 12:48 PM on August 8, 2007

I like the ATP one. For one, most chemical diagrams are aesthetically pleasing just by virtue of being interesting, minimalistic geometric arrangements. For this particular photo, there are also a bevy of other, more obvious reasons as to why I enjoy it.

If pressed to decide which chemical compound I might tattoo on myself, I can't say that ATP would be anywhere near the top of the list, though. No flare. I can think of many better and more interesting ones.

Anyway, I've replaced ATP in my system with something better.
posted by invitapriore at 12:51 PM on August 8, 2007

So this is what the Yakuza would be like if Asperger's were a requirement for membership.
posted by Mayor Curley at 12:53 PM on August 8, 2007 [3 favorites]

They blinded me...with science!

The gal with the upper body entomology themed tattoos really rocked. I have no idea how you could top that. Full body slime mold themed tattoos?
posted by Wavelet at 12:53 PM on August 8, 2007

Those are sweet, and I echo zeoslap.
posted by Nabubrush at 12:58 PM on August 8, 2007

A friend of mine has an awesome tattoo from his ankle to the top of his calf; it's a DNA molecule morphing Escher-style into a tree.

I've always wanted a tattoo of a photo target on my shoulder. Can't bring myself to actually do it though.
posted by mbd1mbd1 at 1:02 PM on August 8, 2007

My pipboy tattoo is still my favorite.
posted by tehloki at 1:17 PM on August 8, 2007 [1 favorite]

Wait, wait. I want a DNA strand but it's got to be a wicked mean DNA strand.
posted by 517 at 1:20 PM on August 8, 2007

That octopus is totally sweet. I wouldn't mind that one, and I'm not all that scientific, even.
posted by mygothlaundry at 1:20 PM on August 8, 2007

I've often pondered what signifier I could possibly get drawn on my body that would so attached to my identity that I wouldn't regret having it there. I'm a teacher, but I teach English, which doesn't have as many fun symbols as math and science. A venn diagram, maybe?
posted by HeroZero at 2:32 PM on August 8, 2007

troybob: "What better way to commit to a life of celibacy than to have the periodic table of the elements tattooed on yourself."

Can't we retire that tired cliché? All of engineers and scientists that I've known have normal social/romantic lives.
posted by octothorpe at 2:42 PM on August 8, 2007 [2 favorites]

Does getting a tribal turtle count as a science tattoo just because the guy that got it is a scientist?
posted by puke & cry at 3:12 PM on August 8, 2007

I've always liked the idea of getting a discreet Aleph Null tattoo. But tattoos are (quite literally) not kosher.
posted by Luddite at 3:13 PM on August 8, 2007

"Science" tattoos scream "hey look at me I took an intro [biology/chemistry] class and I am so cool, science rules guys! yeah! I don't actually know anything about being a professional scientist and I'll probably be a technician or actually more likely work at starbucks or an indie book store for the rest of my life" etc etc
posted by rxrfrx at 3:20 PM on August 8, 2007

I'm not a big tattoo fan, but the raptor and the mean DNA dragon helix are great quality tattoos.
posted by misha at 3:24 PM on August 8, 2007 [1 favorite]

Nthing the DNA monster.

This might be a good one, an I believe in science logo.

A superb black light tattoo.
posted by nickyskye at 3:31 PM on August 8, 2007 [1 favorite]

oh wait, here's a good math knuckle tat.
posted by nickyskye at 3:34 PM on August 8, 2007

A guy in my lab has a beautiful stylized tattoo of an sp3-hybridized molecule on his shoulder. Like a methane molecule, but the tattoo only depicts the orbitals. Very Zen-like.

I've never wanted a tattoo before but that one got me thinking...
posted by switchsonic at 3:53 PM on August 8, 2007

I have a water molecule similar to this, although inverted and a little more balanced, design-wise. It's the one I get the most comments on. Most of them are "What is that?" but occasionally it'll be the jump off for an interesting conversation.
The bassist in my band has a graph of a sine wave around his wrist.
And yes, we have active sex lives.
posted by thatswherebatslive at 4:16 PM on August 8, 2007

I know a pretty highly-regarded biologist who has ATG tattooed on the knuckles of one hand. I'm assuming she has a stop codon tattooed on the other hand. I thought that was pretty hard core.
posted by pombe at 4:43 PM on August 8, 2007

Creepy Anatomy tattoos
Sealife tattoos
Cephalopod tattoos (self link)
posted by cephalopodcast at 5:25 PM on August 8, 2007

What better way to commit to a life of celibacy than to have the periodic table of the elements tattooed on yourself.

Just like to emphasize: science tat == 8 kazillion hot points added to your total. To be fair: I have a punctuation tattoo and am planning another.
posted by dame at 6:14 PM on August 8, 2007

I knew someone once who had e^x tattooed on her shoulder (but in the stylized LaTeX font, so it looked really classy).

Sorry guys, last I knew she was taken.
posted by A dead Quaker at 6:35 PM on August 8, 2007

One of my friends has h-bar (the symbol for Plank's constant) tattooed on her shoulder. She's entering grad school for a doctorate in physics so she is the real deal.
posted by schroedinger at 6:49 PM on August 8, 2007

I'm an undergrad in astronomy right now, and I've been thinking about this as a tattoo.
posted by Arturus at 6:52 PM on August 8, 2007

Someone should make temporary science tattoos.

IIRC when my gf was accepted into her major, they gave her some official biology department temporary tattoos.
posted by hattifattener at 7:26 PM on August 8, 2007

I once dated a guy who later got a tattoo of a geometric proof of the pythagorean theorem. It was so totally hot.
posted by ch1x0r at 9:20 PM on August 8, 2007

This one's poemy, not sciencey.
posted by exlotuseater at 9:31 PM on August 8, 2007

I dated a girl who had an empty set {} on the back of her neck, I drew the neuron that another ex got tattood on her shoulder and I have a brain between my shoulder blades.
One day I'll be called Brian again and my kids will ask "what is that on your back?" and I'll say "well, you see kids, when I was your age..."
posted by Brainy at 9:51 PM on August 8, 2007

This is computer sciencey rather than Sciencey, but I really want something along the lines of a wrench manipulating square brackets - or an octagon formed of square brackets. You know, 8 bits to a byte, powers of 2, all that.

I do a LOT with byte arrays and back end server & infrastructure code, and the phrase "bit wrenching" or "byte wrenching" has occurred to me many times. And besides the type of software development I love doing, I also really like working on mechanical things with physical wrenches... so it has a lot of meaning to me on at least two levels. I'm sure if I try hard enough I can BS a third.

Of course, I am no visual artist, and futzing around with drawing programs has never produced anything I like. I should try to communicate this idea to an Actual Artist and go from there, but for some reason this seems daunting.
posted by flaterik at 12:33 AM on August 9, 2007

And nobody thought of getting some bitchin' Blind Watchmaker tattoos? Anyone? Anyone?
posted by micketymoc at 4:35 AM on August 9, 2007

Those are cool.
posted by OmieWise at 5:43 AM on August 9, 2007

What? No finite state machines in there?
posted by bhance at 10:10 AM on August 9, 2007

I feel that this was as awesome as promised.
posted by Many bubbles at 9:45 PM on August 9, 2007

Also, one of our own.
posted by cortex at 9:57 AM on August 12, 2007