“Are you sure about this?” Felice Frankel couldn’t resist asking as she stepped up to receive her distinguished alumna award from Brooklyn College, CUNY earlier this year. The award was in recognition of her scientific photographs and the understanding they have brought to science education.

“I always thought that I was stupid because I didn’t get it,” recalls Frankel of her time as a biology undergraduate. “Well finally, after all these years, I realize that maybe the figure itself was lousy. Just because something is published in a textbook, doesn’t mean it’s clear.”

Despite the abundance of snapshots and diagrams attempting to depict cells, bacteria, and other microbiology components in scientific publications, these subjects have not garnered much face time in the world beyond journals and textbooks until recently. Now, through science photo competitions and artistic renderings, the popularity of scientific images has grown. And as researchers and artists often find themselves grappling with the same set of macro materials, educators are becoming more attuned to the potential for visual representations as tools for learning, teaching, and drawing interest, for scientists and non-scientists alike.

It’s a nano world after all
Published in 2009, Frankel’s latest book, No Small Matter: Science on the Nanoscale, features a line-up of nanoscience fundamentals, from quantum phenomena to a cascade of electrons, found in everyday objects. It transform the ordinary—such as a fractured wine glass to a burning candle—into the exotic by imaging them at the nanoscale. Flipping through the book is like taking a trip across a foreign land from behind the wheel of a Winnebago.

The images—all accompanied by text written by co-author George Whitesides—are frequently not recognizable as snapshots of the nano subjects themselves, but rather resemble familiar, everyday objects.

“Having a picture of that world, per se, doesn’t get you to understand why it’s so unbelievably different down there,” said Frankel about life on the nanoscale. “The most important part for me was to develop some sort of visual experience in metaphoric terms.”

Rather than simply show pictures of nanosized particles, No Small Matter invites readers to understand basic concepts that occur on the nanoscale, as well. Each page of the book bypasses the traditional formula approach of text-plus-diagram, offering intriguing titles and skillfully polished images that are striking whether the picture is abstract or mundane.

At the nanoscale, particles cannot be traditionally photographed. But using electron or scanning probe microscopy in conjunction with computer systems and graphics, Frankel creates images which appear like photos. For the really perplexing concepts though, optics photography works just fine. For Frankel, these concepts are best conveyed through sights of violin strings, dish soap suds, and glass apples.

“I use my tools to communicate ideas in science. You might look at it and think that it’s art—and that’s fine—but it’s not what I want you to do,” she says. She refuses on principle to release any of her images unless it will be published with an appropriate descriptive sidebar. Even her photographs furnishing corporate boardrooms have them, allowing the viewer to know exactly what they are looking at when they get within reading distance. “I could probably make a lot more money if I had really great labels, mysterious labels. Which makes it art I suppose.”

So although you may find it on a coffee table, Frankel does not consider this an art book. The images may be beautiful and, at times, perplexingly unscientific, but they constantly rely on the buttress of Whitesides descriptions.

Teaching scientists to open their eyes
Another stab at refining the visual is taken by participants of the Image and Meaning (IM) workshops that Frankel founded in 2001 as part of Harvard University’s Initiative in Innovative Computing (IIC) Envisioning Science Program. The workshops aim to improve the ways visual representation can be used to bolster the fields of science and technology.

At the workshops, researchers bring in their representations intended for submission to various journals. What they often discover, is that their images—figures designed to for the purpose of complimenting a reports written text—are not as good as they thought.

“The whole notion of bringing in a fresh eye is what our workshops are all about. The problem is that we all get so used to what we’re looking at that we just assume that somebody else sees what we want them to see,” said Frankel.

Frankel is working on another book, tentatively titled Visual Strategies for Scientists, that will feature before and after shots of images that scientists have improved based on the participation in one of these workshops.

From scientists to students: a test in design
These days, Frankel works with science students in another project, called Picturing to Learn (PtL). In the program, undergraduate students are asked to draw scientific concepts as if they were explaining it to a friend. The students accompany the drawings with a list of the things they think it should include, creating text to go with their representation. These drawings are evaluated, discussed, and catalogued into a searchable online database. “What is incredibly exciting is that we are finding their misconceptions,” Frankel says. “That’s the key.” By identifying which aspects students don’t understand teachers can focus on them in subsequent lessons.

The findings are especially valuable for teachers, who can pick through this database of over 3000 drawings to evaluate students from another angle. “You’re able to literally filter through all these drawings, find the subject, find the misconception, find the certain style of drawing. Do certain metaphors make more mistakes? It’s huge.”

A dual nature
“When scientists look, they tend to like very literal representations,” says Jody Rasch, senior vice president of a financial corporation by day and microscopy artist by night.

When he first began, Rasch’s artistry traced the lines of traditional landscapes. But he has since moved on to unseen scientific landscapes, inspired by concepts that seem to defy reality, such as wave particle duality. Using acrylics, oils, pencils, paper, and canvas, Rasch splays concepts and objects, from particle physics to astrology.

“Those images which look abstract are actually proofs of Einstein’s theory of relativity,” he says. According to Rasch, some of his paintings are designed to contrast an object’s microscopic beauty with the potential destruction that they can cause. One example is his blue-toned oil on canvas featuring HIV deficiency. The idea is to intrigue people to explore the concepts beyond what they can see with their own eyes. The idea, says Rasch, is to circumvent the simply technical approach, which discourages many people from investigating further.

And the winner is….
“A lot of science is explained verbally, but these pictures bring the essence of visual appeal,” says Eric Flem, communications manager at Nikon. He is referring to the images submitted for the company’s Small World Contest, one of the oldest imaging contests, founded in 1977.

When Flem took control of the competition in the late 1990s, Nikon was receiving only about three hundred images annually with very little coverage in the mainstream media. But these days, after a few changes—most notably, the acceptance of digital imaging— each year breaks the record of the one before. The 2010 competition had almost 1000 contestants and over 2200 image submissions.

There are little restrictions on the participants and submissions. Because participants are not limited to a particular discipline, the content ranges from material science to pharmaceutical products to live-cell imaging. And the participants do not necessarily have Ph.D.s. “Because of this broad range of imagery, what’s also grown a lot is the number of non-scientists who are entering, and winning, the competition,” says Flem.

“We’ve always said its where art meets science, but over the last couple of years, it’s really where the public meets science,” says Flem. During the past few years, the national media has become more and more interested in the competition. Major media sources including National Geographic, USA Today, Scientific American, and CNBC have recently run stories announcing the contest winners.

“That’s where this competition becomes very critical. A lot of obstacles that the scientific community is confronted by come from a lack of understanding of what [scientists] are doing,” says Flem. He sees the competition as an important opportunity for scientists to broaden the public’s perception and understanding of their research. “If people see something that they’re interested in, they look further into what it is,” says Flem.

Seeing is believing
“When people see the images we produce, they gain an appreciation for basic science,” says Thomas Deerinck. Deerinck develops microscopy methods at the University of California at San Diego (UCSD) and won the 2002 Small World Contest with his depiction of rat brains.

Deerinck’s signature works are mainly microscopic images of fluorescently stained animal organs. In addition to being a longtime contributing artist for BioTechniques, he has placed in other Small Word contests and has appeared at Higher Pictures Gallery in New York City in the 2008 show titled Cosmological Embeddedness. And just this past year, Deerinck had the honor of being the first and only person to image “Synthia,” the synthetic genome created by Craig Venter’s team at the Craig Venter Institute.

“Everything is interconnected, and understanding how all the parts fit and work together will ultimately help us cure diseases and understand who we are,” says Deerinck. “Microscopy is the tool that can do this.”

Deerinck has been rather busy lately. He’s working with Roger Tsien, winner of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, on a new genetically engineered fluorescent protein called miniSOG. He’s also working on a way to visualize the distribution of proteins and cell organelles within a cell by both light and electron microscopy.

Truth and beauty, says Deerinck, are connected in people’s minds. “A pretty picture that reveals a scientific discovery you’re trying to explain or a theory you’re moving forward is more likely to be accepted if it is beautiful.”