A Mole of Chemists

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

So - this may as well serve as my first thread ever. Getting bolder I guess.

The other day I was walking down the hallway at work and I just happened to be walking about 20 feet behind my supervisor. So I say, “Hey! It’s a parade of chemists!” Because I’m just that funny.

This led me to the obvious compulsion to come up with a term for groups of scientists (and branching out into other areas) with the following results:

A Mole of Chemists
A Detail of Engineers
A Conglomerate of Geologists
A Gallery of Artists
A Reserve of Bankers
A Case of Lawyers
A Stand of Foresters
A School of Teachers
A Galaxy of Astronomers
An Infestation of Entomologists
A Series of Mathematicians
A Body of Physicians
A Quantum of Physicists
A Colony of Microbiologists
A Stack of Librarians
A Crop of Farmers
An Aquifer of Hydrologists
Have I left anyone out?

Please don’t tell me this has been done before, because you will ruin my pride in my sense of creativity.

2

A single physicist (is there any other sort?) would be a Quanta.

A group of physicists would be an Interference.

You can figure out what a Superposition of physicists would be :wink:

Si

3

I knew I’d get a correction on that one - Thanks!

Right? Quanta = plural of Quantum… rusty Latin. Let’s go with Interference!

4

A scribble of writers.
A panel of cartoonists.
An opinion of editorial columnists.
A blurb of publicists.
A legend of mapmakers.
A manual of technical writers.
An easel of painters.
A roller of house painters.
A board of drywallers.
A nail of carpenters.

5

Possibly I’m a bit too literal-minded, but I looked at the thread title and wondered how many millenia it would be until the number of human chemists ever reached Avogadro’s number.

6

Right, and why would you want the plural? You don’t have several collections of physicists. You have only one collection of physicists. You had it right the first time- “quantum”.

7

A structure of architects
A panda of creationists
A cell of biologists
A consciousness of psychologists
A mischief of rodeo clowns
A cube of mimes
A walk of zombies
A trample of jockeys

8

An organ of biologists
A ledger of accountants
A magazine of shooters
A truckload of drivers
A basket of weavers
A bundle of knitters

9

A Pride of First-Time Threaders

10

A nitpick of pedants.
A query of survey takers.

11

A pack of dog trainers.

A payload of rocket scientists.

A crapload of candidates for office. :wink:

12

A transit of surveyors. :slight_smile:

13

I just have to let you know that this is awesome.

A clinic of veterinarians
A flight of pilots

14

I learned from my grandfather (an eminent mathematician and logician) that the proper collective noun for mathematicians is:

A sum of mean squares.
And for prostitutes it’s:

An anthology of prose.

15

Collective nouns are a lot of fun. There was a blog post about collective nouns for plants which inspired a segment on a radio show(mp3 link) about language, which had a follow up thread on the show’s forums.

Some of my favorites.

A buddy of holly
A labyrinth of maize
A wrath of grapes
An eddy of currants

And one of the most fun

A isle of yew

Enjoy,
Steven

16

Extrapolation using a model by Gurevich and Varfolomeyev gives 2341, believe it or not. A simple exponential model gives 4826.

To quote Mark Twain: “There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.”

17

A skein of knitters

18

Oooooh, I’ve got some math friends who will appreciate this. Well, the first one anyway - everyone can appreciate the second.

19

Awesome.

20

A packet of network administrators
A turing of computer scientists
A volt of electrical engineers
A green of environmentalists
A logic of computer programmers
A gigax of D&D enthusiasts
A greed of Republicans
A bleed of Democrats
a wrench of plumbers
a warp of trekkies