A toe-tally terrific trio

Toe to toe: the three ChattyFeet physicist designs.

By Matin Durrani

It’s not even Halloween yet and Physics World HQ has already received its first gift ideas for the Christmas season. Now most of us might roll our eyes if we were given a pair of socks for Christmas, but the footwear sent to us by UK firm ChattyFeet – slogan “Let the socks do the talkin'” – are sure to bring a smile to any physicist’s face.

The company has three different physics-related sock designs on offer, each depicting a cartoon image of a famous physicist and branded with a toe-totally amusing name. First up is a fetching blue number dubbed “Stephen Toeking” with the washing instruction: “Choose a slow spinning cycle to avoid a black hole.”

Then there’s the yellow-and-orange “Prof. Brian Sox”, targeting the numerous fans of the floppy-fringed British physicist-turned-broadcaster with the large gnashers. “No bleaching,” warns the washing label. “I have perfect white teeth!”

Finally, there’s our favourite, “Albert Einstoe”, which is a smart galactic black, dotted with white stars. The garment warns customers that “washing socks at the right temperature could stop an unnecessary time travel journey”.

The unisex socks are all made from 75% combed cotton, 23% polyamide and 2% elastane, which I’m intrigued to note is uncannily – through probably unintentionally – similar to the proportions of dark energy, dark matter and ordinary matter in the universe.

Gil Kahana, ChattyFeet co-founder, says that the real Brian Cox “recently got a pair from someone we know and seemed to find the idea entertaining”. There’s even a video of the fictional Prof. Brian Sox carrying out research at the Large Laundry Collider. “We think he’s a super cool guy and we were hoping that it would make him smile,” says Kahana.

We were left wondering what other physics-related socks the company could make. Surely there’s a market for items featuring Isaac New-toe, Werner Heel-senberg, Erwin Shoe-dinger and, er, Nails Bohr. My colleague Louise Mayor also suggests Lisa Sandall.

If you can think of any other physics footwear, do let us know.