this post was submitted on 29 Jan 2025
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Science Memes

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 month ago

In his essay "To Tell a Chemist" (1965), Asimov proposed a simple shibboleth for distinguishing chemists from non-chemists: ask the person to read the word "unionized". Chemists, he noted, will read un-ionized (electrically neutral), while non-chemists will read union-ized (belonging to a trade union).

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 month ago

If you don't think about it very hard, solidarity is basically macro ionization

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 month ago
[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 month ago

Ah, because of the ions.

Took me eons.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago (1 children)

My initial thought was "would chemists theoretically be less into labor protections than plumbers"?

I guess that puts me in a third bucket.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Am a chemist in your group. I read it the plumber way too. Took me several seconds to get it.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Good luck finding the chemistry teacher, though.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

As a leftist chemistry teacher, I read it as "having attained union", rather than "not ionized", so YMMV with this heuristic

ETA: (also, yeah, I have excellent job security until all public schools are abolished in the US)

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

What about ChemE then? They're both. Sort of. Okay maybe they're not chemists, but... chemistry-adjacent.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Perfectly balanced, as all things should be.