this post was submitted on 05 May 2026
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Science Memes

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Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!

A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.



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If you are here asking: "Is this a science meme?"

Probably, yes. We use the Dawkins definition of meme: a replicating idea, not just an image macro with a fact on it. A good post here doesn't need to teach you something. It needs to make you ask something: who, what, where, when, and especially why or how.

Science isn't a filing cabinet of facts, it's a conversation. For example, a photo of an eel or other localized wildlife counts because most people never see one, and wonder is the first step of inquiry. A car meme counts if it makes you curious about what's under the bonnet. If you want to talk about something you noticed in the world, chances are someone else wants to talk about it too.

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See the pinned paper on Shitposting as Public Pedagogy if you want the academic case for why this works.



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[–] Kraiden@piefed.social 10 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

Know of any good visualizations of this? Because I have no idea what something has to look like in order to be spun 360 and be inverted from where it started. That has to be some 4th spatial dimension tesseract shit, surely. That breaks my brain!

eta: saw @rockerface@lemmy.cafe posted spinors which has some great illustrations... surprisingly less 4th dimensional than I was expecting, but still brain breaking

[–] i_love_FFT@jlai.lu 8 points 2 months ago

There is the famous "belt trick", plus this PBS Spacetime really explains it well!

https://youtu.be/pWlk1gLkF2Y

All macroscopic examples of spinor involve an object attached to the exterior world. Electrons having spin 1/2 therefore imply that they don't exist "by themselves" and are embedded in a larger field.

I'm not sure whether that would be the electron field of the electromagnetic field, or maybe all of the fields?