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).
12 Comments
smeg@feddit.uk · 88 pts · 1y
SwordInStone@lemmy.world · 11 pts · 1y
thanks
LordTrychon@startrek.website · 24 pts · 1y
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).
waz@feddit.uk · 6 pts · 1y
Or some will say it’s spelled incorrectly
rockSlayer@lemmy.world · 20 pts · 1y
If you don't think about it very hard, solidarity is basically macro ionization
djsoren19@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 18 pts · 1y
Onionized
BudgetBandit@sh.itjust.works · 15 pts · 1y
Ah, because of the ions.
Took me eons.
Vanth@reddthat.com · 12 pts · 1y
My initial thought was "would chemists theoretically be less into labor protections than plumbers"?
I guess that puts me in a third bucket.
wolframhydroxide@sh.itjust.works · 6 pts · 1y
Am a chemist in your group. I read it the plumber way too. Took me several seconds to get it.
AlligatorBlizzard@sh.itjust.works · 12 pts · 1y
Good luck finding the chemistry teacher, though.
wolframhydroxide@sh.itjust.works · 11 pts · 1y
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)
ornery_chemist@mander.xyz · 4 pts · 1y
What about ChemE then? They're both. Sort of. Okay maybe they're not chemists, but... chemistry-adjacent.
General_Effort@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 1y
Perfectly balanced, as all things should be.