A reprint from American Scientist the magazine of Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society This reprint is provided for personal and noncommercial use. For any other use, please send a request to Permissions, American Scientist, P.O. Box 13975, Research Triangle Park, NC, 27709, U.S.A., or by electronic mail to
[email protected]. ©Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society and other rightsholders Felice Frankel’s representation (above) of carbon nanotube structures, created by the ma- nipulation of a flatbed scanner image, will appear in an exhi- bition, “Design and the Elas- tic Mind,” February 24–May 12 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City (moma. org/exhibitions/exhibitions. a b c php?id=5632). Felice Frankel is senior research fellow at Harvard University, where she heads the Envisioning Science prorgram at the Initiative in Innovative Computing (IIC). She holds a concurrent appointment as a research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Address: c/o American Scientist, P. O. Box 13975, Re- search Triangle Park, NC 27709-3975. © 2008 Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society. Reproduction 154 American Scientist, Volume 96 with permission only. Contact
[email protected]. Sightings Informed Decisions Felice Frankel n this 30th Sightings, I have decided to discuss one of my own images, as I did in the Ivery first column. Not that I think this particular image is earth-shattering; in fact, many images in this issue of American Scientist might be considered more worthy. But I thought Sightings readers would be interested in an example of what has become for me an obvi- ous, but too-often ignored, transformative exercise: clarifying and learning science by thinking about how to visually represent an idea, a process or a structure in science, for the purpose of explaining it.