“I’m returning that, and we’ll see the results after landing,” said Wakata, who watched over Japan’s giant Kibo lab while aboard the station. He also preformed a series of fun experiments to show Japan’s public how astronauts can fold clothes, ride a “flying carpet,” enjoy weightlessness and use eyedrops in space.

But there’s no gravity (okay, okay, there’s microgravity, get off my tits this is inconsequential to my argument) in space – liquid doesn’t “drop” anywhere. It may form into what we call a drop, here on Earth, but we only call it a drop because of it’s physical, gravity induced action – it drops. In space, ‘drops’ of water just form little floating bubbles. So could they still properly be called eyedrops, unless we’re just bowing to normative linguistic principles? Honestly, I can’t think of any good term to replace it – eye bubbles just sounds gross, eye moisturizer just sounds weird even though that’s more technically what we’re speaking of, on earth or in space.

And really, out of context, an “eye drop” itself sounds kinda gross.

And hey, eyedrops have soothing action action action.

Tags: yes this is really how I amuse myself

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 30th, 2009 at 13:44.