Visual Images in Science Communication

Visual images play a vitally important role in science communication. The way in which scientific information is visually presented helps summarize vast amounts of complex data and facilitates understanding and informed opinion. With figures, drawings, and other visual imagery, ideas, facts, and processes are communicated to the general public or a professional audience. Visual images can bring complex scientific processes and the sometimes invisible world of scientific phenomena to light. Esoteric scientific ideas can be brought to life with photographs, illustrations, and animations while stimulating interest and providing new understanding. However, such [Page 934]imagery can also be deceptive, misleading, and incorrectly used.

Visual forms of science communication include tables, charts, photographs, motion pictures (film, video, computer animation, and big screen productions), museum displays, computer-generated pictures, holographic imagery, models, and even sculpture. Images of science are communicated in an assortment of venues, from academic journals and textbooks to the popular media of television, newspapers, magazines, and the Internet. The technology for displaying such imagery ranges from simple line drawings to high-definition digital motion pictures. And most, if not all, of the sciences have their characteristic visual imagery; from mathematics (geometric shapes, fractals, and the golden section) and physics (light, structures, and materials) to astronomy (speckle imaging, low-energy imaging techniques, and spectroscopy), chemistry (optical and nuclear magnetic resonance images), the earth sciences (sonar imaging and seismic profiles), and the human sciences (X-rays, magnetic resonance imagery, and positron emission tomography), to name a few. In the emerging science of nanotechnology, things take place on a scale invisible to the human eye and can be visualized only through “artificial” representations using sophisticated simulation tools.