My old science teacher Dr Aphorism was brilliant – not just at teaching (and, of course, science), but also at providing invaluable life advice. I always remember one day when I went to her office to talk about a coursework experiment that was not going well. She sat me down, looked at my equations, and pointed at a term involving a square root.
"I know that's the part that's wrong," I said, "but I’ve tried everything, and it just doesn’t work out."
With that, Dr Aphorism smiled and directed my attention to a poster on her wall showing a modified Periodic Table.
"I’m going to leave you here for ten minutes," she said kindly, "and I want you to focus really hard on working out the meaning behind this poster. When I come back I’m sure you’ll have a better understanding..."
TASK: What is the hidden meaning behind this poster? The (perhaps ironic) correct answer is an 8-word phrase which can be enumerated as (5, ?, 7, ?, 4, ?, 3, ?), where some word lengths have been left unknown…
A colour guide for colour-blind solvers is available here.