• blimthepixie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    95
    arrow-down
    4
    ·
    15 hours ago

    It’s mental how this is pretty much known worldwide, like drawing that S thing. The one similar to the Suzuki logo

    • TheEntity@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      38
      ·
      14 hours ago

      As a non-native English speaker, I still have no idea why this specific phrase is so significant and at this point I’m afraid to ask.

      • Sirence@feddit.org
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        6 hours ago

        We actually had the same sentence as the headline for the chapter about mitochondria in our class in the late 90s, just translated. “Mitochondrien - das Kraftwerk der Zelle”

      • xpinchx@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        8
        ·
        11 hours ago

        I think it’s just the most simplified you can get talking about cellular biology, specifically when teaching organelles. So most primary science textbooks use that terminology and it’s more memorable than all the other organelles so it just stuck and it got repeated and reviewed every year and it sorta became a pre Internet meme and part of a shared consciousness if you were schooled in the US.

      • thisbenzingring@lemmy.sdf.org
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        14
        ·
        13 hours ago

        I was born in the 1970’s and it is lost on me too, I think its something that became a thing to the generation after me

        • Rivalarrival@lemmy.today
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          6
          ·
          edit-2
          11 hours ago

          I took biology in 1996; it wasn’t a thing yet. Someone else claimed it was already widespread by 2001. I don’t think I encountered it in the wild before 2005, but it could have been much later than that.

          KnowYourMeme suggests the phrase originated in a textbook from 1957, but it didn’t reach memehood until 2014.

      • Rob Bos@lemmy.ca
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        10
        ·
        14 hours ago

        I think it comes from an episode of Sabrina the Teenage Witch and exploded as a meme.

      • Naz@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        4
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        edit-2
        11 hours ago

        6th grade biology class in the United States, 2001 AD.

        The teacher slaps up a diagram of a cell and organelles.

        30-45 children all looking around the room, not exactly paying attention

        She points to the various organelles, trying to explain their purpose, the golgi complex, ribosomes…

        “And the mitochondria”

        “Is the power house of the cell”

        Children cheer in applause and repeat it, because it rhymes.

        It then enters the collective unconscious of English speakers.

        I was in the room where it happened.

        • bleistift2@sopuli.xyz
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          1 hour ago

          “And the mitochondria”

          “Is the power house of the cell”

          Children cheer in applause and repeat it, because it rhymes.

          Where the hell is the rhyme in this?

    • boonhet@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      37
      ·
      14 hours ago

      The S was known worldwide pre internet though. Was the powerhouse line?