Black linework tattoo of three periodic table element tiles spelling THINK, with Th, In and K on plain skin.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

THINK spelt in periodic table tiles

Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows three square periodic table tiles reading Th (thorium, 90, 232), In (indium, 49, 115) and K (potassium, 19, 39), which together spell THINK. The clean black outlines are unshaded, with large element symbols and smaller names and numbers, and the slightly uneven edges give a hand-drawn feel. The tiles sit side by side on lightly marked skin, shown straight on in a close crop.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

By the time the glass in the wheelhouse had gone to spray, the Margaret Vane was sixty miles off Carrow Haven with a hold full of undersized cod and a skipper who wanted to talk about chemistry. You are the new lad, and Skipper Ruddock is holding out a fistful of sodden cards he has cut from an old school chart, each one swollen like bread and marked with a letter and two numbers.

Keep reading

There are three of them. He lays them in a row on the chart table, weighted at one end by the tin of Golden Syrup he keeps for emergencies. Th, ninety, two hundred and thirty-two. In, forty-nine, a hundred and fifteen. K, nineteen, thirty-nine. "Read them," he says, and you do. He nods, as if the sea had been waiting for you to get it right.

"Thorium, indium, potassium," he says. "Thorium they once wanted for reactors. Indium's soft enough to bend in your fingers. Potassium goes up like a firework if you drop it in water." He taps each card in turn. "Put them together and what do you get?" Before you can answer, the boat lifts and slews, the tin rolls off the table, and the cards skid across the wet floor. You snatch them up, and for one second they sit in your palm in the order he laid them out, spelling a word that has nothing to do with metal.

Ruddock watches you over his glasses. "Next time the net comes up heavy, you check the warp before you check the winch," he says. He pins the three tiles above the radio with a drawing pin through the corner of the potassium. They are still there years later, curling at the edges, long after the Margaret Vane went for scrap in Hull.