Unobtanium

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Jim from Winterlox, Connecticut.

Hi, Jim. Welcome to the show.

Hey, Jim. How are you doing?

Pretty good.

What’s happening?

So about a month ago, I was visiting with an old friend from high school, and we started to talk about movies, and he asked me about the movie Avatar. It was that James Cameron movie from a couple of years ago.

Yeah.

And I told them I couldn’t get into the movie because they used this word unobtainium. And I should say that I’m a mechanical engineer. I’ve been in the field for about nine years. And in the engineering world, unobtainium is kind of like an engineering slang. And it’s used kind of most times in a sarcastic response.

And so unobtainium is this magical material that could do anything, could survive any type of temperature or load. So if a design is not working out well or if you have some unreasonable requirement, you usually respond like, oh, well, we can make it out of unobtainium. Then we could make this thing work.

So as far as I understand what the word is from, it’s unobtainable, and eum, it’s like a common ending for metals like titanium, magnesium, lithium. So you kind of have that together. It’s like an unobtainable metal.

Right, exactly.

Right.

So you had a hard time getting into the movie Avatar because they were talking about unobtainium, right?

Yeah, and it was in such a serious context that I just could never get past that.

So you probably thought they weren’t really flying around either.

No, no. We won’t get into that.

Oh, that’s funny. So that’s jargon from your workplace, and you were totally thrown off by that, right?

What’s your kind of work, Jim?

Mechanical engineer.

I’m a mechanical engineer.

Okay, very good.

Working in the aerospace field.

Yeah, that must have been weird. I knew the word unobtainium before I saw the movie Avatar, but I didn’t have that disconnect. I just assumed that they had finally found this metal that had all these amazing properties, you know. And that’s why they went to the far-flung corners of the universe to destroy people to get it.

Oh, man.

But you must have been laughing every time they mentioned it.

I laughed the first time and then past that it just kept on bothering me and I just can never get into the movie after that.

That makes sense.

It’s got a good history. It leads back to the 1950s, and it pops up in a glossary of words that the Air Force put out. And it’s described basically as you put it, which is it’s a substance having the exact high test properties required for a piece of hardware or other item of use, but not obtainable either because it theoretically cannot exist or because technology is insufficiently advanced to produce it.

Interesting stuff.

I love these kind of like, I love this sly little engineering humor because it’s just an acknowledgement that we know our limits. And I guess we work around them or we seek to surpass them.

So what are you going to do? Are you going to write James Cameron a letter and tell him in the Avatar sequels to knock it off?

Actually, I’m going to call up my friend and tell him that it actually is just an engineering slang. Because he was pretty resolute that it had to mean something else besides that.

He’s got too much faith in Hollywood.

You’re just saying, just put on your 3D glasses and enjoy the movie.

This is the quiet country. You tell people about Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny and Hollywood. This is number four. Son, I’ve got something to tell you. Sit down. Your mother and I think it’s time you knew.

Great stuff.

We appreciate your calling.

Thanks, man.

Thank you.

Bye.

Okay.

Bye-bye.

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