Physics Proverbs

I was a bit bored on the bus this morning, as it got stuck in a traffic jam, so decided to amuse myself (and probably nobody else) by thinking up physics-related versions of traditional proverbs and tweeting them (hashtag #physicsproverbs). I thought it might be fun to use them to indulge in a bit of audience participation, by asking the blogosphere to contribute their own through  the comments box below.

Here are some of my offerings:

  • Never mind the Q-factor, feel the FWHM
  • Don’t throw stones if there are periodic boundary conditions
  • A stitch in time may violate causality
  • A thing of beauty is now generally known as a bottom
  • No amplifier, no gain
  • Nothing is certain, except death and deterministic processes
  • Blood is thicker than dark matter
  • May the Devil take the Hindmarsh
  • Don’t change potentials in mid streamline
  • Angular momentum makes the world go round
  • Many a micro makes a mega
  • When the cat’s away the mice will annoy Dr Schrödinger
  • Ask a silly question, and you might well get a research grant
  • Discreteness is the greater part of granularity
  • There’s no time like t=0
  • The course of a random walk never did run smooth
  • Many hadrons make very few Higgs Bosons at CERN
  • Actions speak louder than differential equations
  • Radiation pressure makes light work
  • Don’t cast your PRLs before swine
  • Nature abhors most of the papers submitted there
  • Photons should be seen and not heard. As opposed to phonons.
  • Power corrupts. Absolute power has exactly the same effect because power is always positive.

You can see all the tweets resulting from the Twitter version of this game here.

5 Responses to “Physics Proverbs”

  1. John Peacock's avatar
    John Peacock Says:

    How about

    “entropy ain’t what it used to be”

  2. Bryn Jones's avatar
    Bryn Jones Says:

    This is tougher than I thought it would be. How about these?

    Don’t put all your electrons in one quantum state.

    Every Dewar flask has an aluminium lining.

    Adequate research council funding is the mother of invention.

    A little learning is a dangerous thing when preparing for an undergraduate examination.

    Out of sight, out of photometric measurement.

    • I like “two’s a meson, three’s a quark”, except I assume it should be “two’s a meson, three’s a baryon” 🙂 I’m going to use that wth my students!

  3. Bryn Jones's avatar
    Bryn Jones Says:

    People who live in glass houses should be wary of the heating effect of infrared radiation.

    Too many particles spoil the two-body problem.

    Not every cloud chamber has a linear accelerator.

    When Schrödinger’s cat is in an indeterminate state the mice will play.

  4. Empty vessels have lower mass

    A stitch in time is only relative

    Time waits for those who travel fast enough

    Don’t throw the baby out as an object with a lower drag coefficient will travel further

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