Real Physicists...


  • Carry toothbrushes, tupperware and silverware with them everywhere they go
  • heat up their food at midnight in the nuclear structure laboratory
    ...and then stay in the lab into the wee hours of morning
    ...and then regret not being able to sleep in the lab because it's too cold
  • Dream of owning Dippin' Dots...but settle for making their own laser cooled version.
  • Have conniptions over the 'ice cream of the future'
  • spell 'physics' with an 'f'
  • talk to their oscilloscopes
  • claim that their 'future dust' is in pain
  • wince at the hint of chemistry but gladly attend their luaus
  • describe pasta to be nanotube-esque
  • enjoy garlic pizza (and have toothbrush for breath defense afterwards!)
  • have the prospect of the raisin trap in the future
  • attempt to get spray paint artists to put maxwell's equations on a shirt
    ...and get disappointed when they refuse to write the psi
    ...and get heisenburg or ei π + 1 = 0 instead
  • call chairs that are stuck a classic example of 'quantum entanglement'
  • spend friday nights/saturdays in the lab
  • look forward to the Friday Keg --> not to get away from physics, but to share their pritchard-ioffe catastrophe stories with other physicists
  • know that MOTs go beyond apple sauce. in fact, MOTs involve magnetic fields and lasers...
  • make up conjectures on the identities of images created by a multi-mode optical fiber after lunch
  • read a multitude of science magazines and get excited when someone mentions an article they've heard of
  • collect the signs from the physics keggers
  • enjoy watching/playing croque-y ball
  • read nobel lectures for fun
  • can do tensor calculus but can't remember long division

Yiyi Deng
May 2003, updated June 2003
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