Visual Art and Writing in Science and Engineering
A color schlieren image reveals thermal convection from a human hand to the surrounding still atmosphere.Copyright 2013 Gary Settles, Wikimedia Commons http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Thermal-plume-from-human-hand.jpg
Students learn the value of writing and art in science and engineering. They acquire vocabulary that is appropriate for explaining visual art and learn about visual design principles (contrast, alignment, repetition and proximity) and elements (lines, color, texture, shape, size, value and space) that are helpful when making visual aids. A PowerPoint® presentation heightens students' awareness of the connection between art and engineering in order to improve the presentation of results, findings, concepts, information and prototype designs. Students also learn about the science and engineering research funding process that relies on effective proposal presentations, as well as some thermal conductivity / heat flow basics including the real-world example of a heat sink—which prepares them for the associated activity in which they focus on creating diagrams to communicate their own collected experimental data.
In order to secure funding and communicate their findings to the greater science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) community, engineers develop skills to be able to write clearly and provide multiple avenues to express their findings. While using clear vocabulary and a logical flow of information are very important, many ideas and messages are easier to show than they are to say. Thus, visual art plays a vital role in explaining information, as seen by the graphs, tables, charts, pictures, diagrams, photographs and other visual aids used regularly in STEM proposals, reports and other publications. The appropriate and clear use of visual representations enables audiences that are unfamiliar with the topic to easily understand the presented information without requiring advanced knowledge of the subject.
After this lesson, students should be able to:
- Explain the connection between art and engineering.
- Explain how research funding happens in the sciences and engineering.
- Explain the importance of clear communication and how art can help accomplish this.
- Describe images using art vocabulary.
- Explain how thermal conductivity affects heat flow.