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The Science of Art: images from Princeton
"Study the science of art, and the art of science." That quote, from Leonardo da Vinci, serves as inspiration for Princeton University's annual "Art of Science" competition, open to all members of the university's community. The theme in 2010, the fourth year of the contest, was "energy," broadly defined. All of the works captured, or arose from, research in progress.
The winner was Jerry Ross, a researcher at the Princeton Plasma Physics Lab, for "Xenon Plasma Accelerator," a title that received some explained in a sub-caption: "The Hall thruster is an electric propulsion technology that uses magnetic and electric fields to ionize and accelerate propellant. In this image the plasma accelerator is operating on xenon propellant."
David Nagib, a graduate student in chemistry, earned second prize with "Therapeutic Illumination," an image of a photosynthesis-mimicking strategy through which his lab tries to achieve certain chemical reactions through the use of an energy-saving compact fluorescent bulb. The third prize went to an undergraduate, Tim Kirby, of the physics department, for "Neutron Star Scattering off a Super Massive Black Hole," which is ... sort of self-explanatory.
"Therapeutic Illumination"
Do check out the montage of winners and other entries the judges deemed noteworthy, for a sense of the aesthetic side of science.
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contributors
Joshua Rothman is a graduate student and Teaching Fellow in the Harvard English department, and an Instructor in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. He teaches novels and political writing.
