Costume Party
October 31, 2008
Today is Halloween, and the blogosphere is rife with costume ideas for fans of science -- and/or science fiction. (Procrastinating sci-fi fans should check out io9's "Ten Awesome Costumes You Slackers Can Get Done by Friday.") Personally, my favorite costume ever was featured last year on The Big Bang Theory, when the Gang of Geeks are invited to Penny's Halloween party, and Sheldon shows up as the Doppler Effect. Needless to say, nobody gets it ("What are you, like, a zebra or something?"). Check it out:
Those wishing to emulate Sheldon -- and why wouldn't you? -- might consider appropriating some other key concepts in physics into your costume ideas. For instance, diehard hipsters tend to dress predominantly in black anyway, so it's easy enough to use that as the basis for a black hole costume. Any hors d'oevres that cross your event horizon are fair game. Bonus points if you rotate. Anyone with access to a pulsing LED display can go trick-or-treating as a pulsar.
Alternatively, you can dress up as your favorite constellation -- Orion is the obvious (and easiest) choice -- or favorite observatory, like the Hubble Space Telescope, or perhaps one of LIGO's interferometers. I expect to see tons of space fans dressed up as Phoenix this year, especially since it seems the poor rover's days on Mars are numbered.
Couples might dress up as a binary star, or perhaps particle/antiparticle pairs; most of us with science geek tendencies think that whole annihilation thing is pretty hot. Or you could go very high-concept and recreate the infamous double-slit experiment: you and your Significant Other can create a coordinated pattern depicting an interference pattern, and periodically split up whenever you encounter barriers (a.k.a., other party guests), recombining on the other side of the room.
Or you can go The X-Files route and dress up as Mulder, Scully -- or an alien. Regardless of your choice of costume, happy Halloween!
Comments
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Wow, now that's funny! "annihilation"!
Posted by: Freiddie | October 31, 2008 at 08:53 PM
A posse of geeks could go to a party (or have a party) as the different types of quarks.
Posted by: Adam Gonnerman | October 31, 2008 at 09:55 PM