It’s known as the tip-of-the-tongue moment: when there is a precise name or word you're trying to remember but cannot for the life of you remember it! And then, when you’ve forgotten all about it and when you least expect to do so, it comes at you like a bolt of lightning. It happens to you, me and the smartest of physicists of them all too, apparently.
He is a physicist in material sciences at Cambridge university. In other words, a pretty smart guy. And he couldn’t remember the word ‘photon’ because of what he calls a ‘brain freeze’. He had to settle for describing it thus. Up until now, I didn’t think of a photon as a ‘shiny crumb’ but I think I now will.
If a proton is a shiny crumb, apparently an electron is a zappy crumb… and so on.
Someone couldn’t remember the term ‘tape measure’ and called it the ‘how far machine’. Sounds about right.
Lab coat sounds a lot simpler than ‘science blazer’. Also, science blazer sounds a lot snazzier and cooler!
One person couldn’t remember the word ‘foal’ and used ‘horse puppy’ instead; which to my mind is far cuter. Another forgot saddle and came up with horse seat.
One person forgot the name of their colleague of ten years while introducing them to someone else. Then there was one person who forgot their mother's name once. This Twitter user forgot her own husband's name. Still married, asked another tweet.
Describing soup as ‘really really wet salad’ is quite inaccurate. I truly question how that person got a PhD in neuroscience.
Orgasm and organism are quite similar – but you’d better watch out if you're speaking to a large group of 18 year olds.
Some forget how many ‘nas’ the word has, some forget it entirely. They remember that it is yellow and has its own ‘case’.
A fork is in fact, a thing with ‘four stabby fingers’ that you stab your food with. The waiter should have understood, I feel.
The one thing you must do, when you're trying to sound articulate, is to forget the word ‘articulate.’ This twitter thread was all about the lack of articulacy after all.
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