APS News

October 1998 (Volume 7, Number 9)

Zero Gravity: The Lighter Side of Science

APS News T-Shirt/Bumper Sticker Slogan Contest Finalists

We received several hundred responses to our announcement of the T-Shirt/Bumper Sticker Slogan Contest in the April 1998 issue of APS News. Many, many submissions played on the familiar theme, "Physicists Do It....." By far the most frequent entry was, Physicists Do It With Models versions of which were submitted by Damian Handzy, W. Yeung, Dirk Jan Bukman, and John Hornstein.

However, frequency of citation is not the sole defining criteria for any given slogan's success. Thus, we've selected a number of our personal favorites as finalists, as well as some additional runners-up. Members are encouraged to review the selections below and vote for their favorites by email [TEESHIRT@aps.org]. Winning entries will appear on assorted T-shirts, bumper stickers and coffee mugs that will be available for sale at the upcoming APS Centennial Meeting in Atlanta, Georgia, in March 1999.
Barrett Ripin
Editor, APS News

FINALISTS
Three of our selected finalists submitted slogans requiring visual clues or graphics that play on popular physics concepts. Eric Weeks of the University of Pennsylvania was the first to suggest a T-shirt with the caption, "Don't Drink and Derive," along with accompanying graphics (see below) [Mike Famiano submitted a similar entry without the graphics.]

zero1

Eric Jones of Case Western Reserve University suggested the following:

If this sticker is blue, you're driving too fast.

And John Pierre of San Francisco, California, submitted a physicists' alternative to the popular "Darwin Fish" bumper sticker:

feynman bumper

John Edwards struck a humorous chord with numerous APS staff members with the slogan,

Flirt Harder-- I'm a Physicist

Devlin Gualtieri of Allied Signal suggested the following as an apt slogan for a children's tee-shirt for beleaguered parents.

Maxwell's Little Demon

Roger Johnson of Los Alamos National Laboratory submitted several pages of slogans, many of which we selected as runners-up in addition to his finalist entry:

God does not play dice with the universe. It's more like whiffle ball.

Meanwhile, Sir Denys Wilkinson of East Sussex, England, took a more literate approach, borrowing his submission from an undisputed master:

"...we delight in physics..."
W. Shakespeare, Macbeth II.iii

RUNNERS-UP
Other entries along the "Physicists Do It..." lines included:

Physicists Do It....
with the least action (Devlin Gualtieri)
discretely (Steven Watanabe, Bryan Dorland, Caroline Ritz-Gold)
with a Big Bang (Damian Handzy)
in Super-Positions (Todd Pittman)
with gravity (Roald Wangsness)
with increasing entropy (John Hornstein)
with chaotic motion (John Hornstein)
quantum coherently (John Hornstein)
with minimal coupling (Lewis Orphanos)
with momentum (James McGee)
relatively well
with uncertainty

Sex is the physics urge sublimated (Daniel Grupp)
Old physicists never die; they just accelerate to light speed! (Bill Martin)
This car brakes for Schroedinger's Cat (Devlin Gualtieri)
Maintain chirality: Pass on the left only (Devlin Gualtieri)
Conserve energy: Don't be a joule thief (Joel Liebman)
Conserve energy: Commute with a Hamiltonian (Enid Sichel)
Ys Matters! (Chris Paul)
Gravity Gets Me Down (Seyffie Maleki)
Excuse me while I collapse my wave function (Leonard Anderson)
Know a Good Quantum Mechanic? (Loren Booda)
Honk if you love phonons (Loren Booda)

And finally, from the prolific Roger Johnson:
I'm a physicist; I don't need people skills
Pseudo Science Sucks
Chirality is twisted
Keeper of the hidden variables

Stop Physics Hooliganism:
symmetry breaking
collapsing state vectors
degenerancy
chaos
turbulence

Physicists To-Do List:
develop grand unified theory
find missing dark matter
solve solar neutrino problem
time travel
find tachyons and magnetic monopoles
change underwear



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APS encourages the redistribution of the materials included in this newspaper provided that attribution to the source is noted and the materials are not truncated or changed.

Editor: Barrett H. Ripin

October 1998 (Volume 7, Number 9)

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Articles in this Issue
Centennial: Once Every Hundred Years
Centennial: Special Events
Centennial: Unit Exhibits
Centennial: The Historical BAPS
Centennial: A Century of Physics
Centennial: Special Features
World's Top Science Students Gathered in Dallas for 1998 ISEF
APS Awards Scholarships to Minority Undergrads
Bill Phillips To Be Honored at DLS' ILS-XIV
Combating 'Science Anxiety' in the Classroom
Letters
The Back Page
Zero Gravity: The Lighter Side of Science