I was recently reminded of this wonderful visualization of the processes inside the cell. As a physicist, I found this quite powerful in imagining this mysterious (and usually, to me, boring) microscopic world. It was created by a Harvard professor in conjunction with a scientific animation company. Here’s the video:
[kml_flashembed movie=”http://www.youtube.com/v/BtZEqQ1cpmk” width=”425″ […]

I’m in a scientific visualization seminar now, so I’ll probably be sharing some beautiful things with some regularity.
There is something very satisfying about complex geometrical objects. I think my brain feels this sigh of relief at such orderly intricacies. So, I love these images created by computer algorithm, basically tweaking parameters to get […]

Our most famous fluids tend to be transparent — air and water, for example. This makes it hard for us to imagine how fluids are moving as members of the general public, but also poses an interesting problem for budding engineers. They need to know how to make fluids do what they want […]

This morning’s plenary was by KC Cole on her new book Something Incredibly Wonderful Happens: Frank Oppenheimer and the world he made up

As anyone who knows one whit about me recognizes, this talk about Frank Oppenheimer and his creation of the Exploratorium was deeply significant to me. I was a postdoc under Paul Doherty […]

Well, I bet they’re all that cute.
But I don’t care how big and manly you are, you know you’re moved to scritch it behind the ears and say “who’s a cute little kitty? That’s right, you’re a cute little kitty. Waschawhaschawhuh.”
From the original article at National Geographic.
June 29, 2009—The discovery of ten lynx […]

My friend and fellow science writer Jen Frazer has started a new blog (well, two actually, but let’s start with the first). I don’t know how she can spend a whole day at work writing copy, and then come home and spin out gorgeous and witty prose, but, hey, she didn’t win the AAAS Science […]

I got a good question on my Adopt a Physicist forum last week, from an 8th-grader named, for privacy purposes, “S.F.” I asked them to look around for interesting things around them and ask me about the physics of them. He/she wrote:
Actually today I did notice some strange things. I was washing […]

A (sort of) recent story in the NY Times highlighted the wonderful work of Satre Stuelke, a medical student and former art professor who co-opted the CT scanner for his own aesthetic purposes. Below is just one of the images that resulted — a wind-up toy bunny:
Photo: Satre Stuelke

He says: This is a […]

Wow, I just stumbled upon this and it was so beautiful I had to share:

Thanks to Tibchris on Flickr for posting this (and making it available with Creative Commons).
If you’re looking for freely available images for presentations or in-class use, there are two great places to look:

Wikimedia Commons images are all licensed under Creative Commons, […]