American Chemical Society invents science emojis

The American Chemical Society, the largest scientific society, is looking to increase representation of scientists in digital communication, by designing some emojis.

It joined General Electric to make nine new science emojis to be added to the keyboard features.

Thomas J. Connelly Jr, ACS Executive Director, said: “I'm delighted that ACS in collaboration with General Electric is leading the effort to create science emojis - they have become an essential communication tool today, with more than six billion emojis and emoticons sent around the world every day on mobile messaging apps. Science emojis would boost, and help demystify, science in modern conversation, and ACS is committed to ensuring that science and scientists are represented.”

The nine proposed emojis are a lab coat, test tube, microbe, petri dish, DNA structure, compass, abacus, fire extinguisher and goggles.

The designs were formed at a brainstorming session sponsored by GE and led by ACS staff at Emojicon, a conference in San Francisco devoted to all things emoji. The word is a portmanteau of the Japanese ‘E’ (絵), ‘picture’, and ‘Moji’ (文字), ‘character’ – its resemblance to ‘emotion’ is only a happy coincidence.   

The icons will now be evaluated for inclusion as ‘official’ emojis by the Unicode Consortium, a nonprofit that develops and maintains software standards used internationally. If approved, one or more of them could be rolled out for use in 2018.

In 2015, the Oxford University Press named ‘😂’ its word of the year.