Laura Blue, contributor
(Image: Christophe Gissinger/Princeton University)
The Art of Science contest at Princeton University has a simple goal: to show off the most beautiful and coolest of all images produced at the university in the course of scientific research.
Whether mapping neurons or photographing the field coils of an electrical generator, a scientist rarely sets out with a strong aesthetic vision for his or her work; the purpose is not to create something that looks good. Nevertheless, often in the pursuit of some scientific goal, "Art happens," says Princeton's vice-dean of engineering Pablo Debenedetti, who announced the 2011 winners on Friday. "Science and engineering are profoundly human activities. They often produce beautiful objects," Debenedetti explains. Art of Science, a competition and art show launched in 2005 and which has run annually since 2009, gives researchers and students a forum to appreciate that beauty in their work.
This year?s 168 entries come from researchers and students in fields ranging from ecology to mechanical engineering. You can view New Scientist's favourites in our gallery.
The winner this year is entitled Chaos and Geomagnetic Reversals, by physicist Christophe Gissinger. It shows a simple model of geomagnetic reversals - when the earth's polarity switches. The image appears as ribbons of bright yellows, reds, pale blues and greens swirled on a black background.
The second-place entry is Tree, by electrical engineering student Zhen James Xiang. It is a photograph of a spiky tree trunk, split into rectangular fragments using an image-decomposition algorithm that?s based on a data structure also called "tree" - a dyadic or binary tree.
The third-place entry, Dust to Dust, to Planets?, from astrophysicists Xuening Bai and James Stone, shows a model of how gas and pebbles interact in space to produce clumps of pebbles, which then become the building blocks of new planets. This image is in black and white, and looks almost like an aerial photo of choppy waves on the open ocean.
This year contest organisers chose the theme "intelligent design" - a rubric they confess was intentionally picked to be provocative. The term, they decided, suggests a theme that can be interpreted broadly enough to encourage submissions from any number of fields. But given its wide use in attacks on the theory of evolution, contest organisers hope to push scientists to reclaim the term, and remind one another of all its other possible connotations: the intelligently designed product of a thoughtful engineer, or the clever new simulation from a creative computer scientist.
"Art is supposed to be thought-provoking," says Andrew Zwicker, a contest co-organiser and one-time winner, back in 2005.
Zwicker says he hopes that programs like this one will offer scientists not only an opportunity to showcase their beautiful images to one another, but also a chance to reflect, perhaps, on how to communicate their work to the public more broadly. At its best, the art of science can demonstrate the beauty of scientific pursuit to non-scientists and scientists alike, and can help researchers think about the impact and deeper meaning of their work.
The Art of Science gallery is available online, or you can view New Scientist's favourites in our gallery. The images will also be on display at Princeton University?s Friend Center for one year.
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