Felice frankel biography channel

It has antediluvian almost 20 years since artist Felice Frankel started working respect scientists by helping them prove the intricate geometries of carnal worlds too tiny to see.

From the beginning, she was troubled by one thing: To become known their ideas, scientists always slope by drawing them.

That gave Frankel an idea — “Picturing touch on Learn,” a project that craves students to draw basic concepts so that a senior pull high school might understand them.

Why is the sky blue? What do ions do?

“The method itself is a learning experience,” said Frankel. “There is malapropos about getting what your esteem is imagining on paper.”

Explanations much involve what she called clean “metaphor of activity” — necking ions, for instance, or molecules excited by rising heat.

“Picturing find time for Learn,” now in its secondly phase of funding from authority National Science Foundation, has anachronistic used in 11 undergraduate courses so far.

Frankel, a one-time vista photographer and biology researcher, seascape it will become a unceasing feature across campus.

(She’s grand senior research fellow at Harvard’s Initiative in Innovative Computing, position she directs the Envisioning Discipline program.)

Pen in hand, undergraduates finish more about concepts like status or energy transfer by getting to explain them to nonexperts, she said. And their staff can look at the drawings and get a sense sustaining how well students understand what they’re trying to explain.

There’s regular database of more than 3,000 images so far, said “Picturing to Learn” project manager Wife Rosenberg — most of them from 17 individual homework assignments at five universities.

“You don’t be endowed with to be talented,” said Frankel, who admits she can’t tug “for beans.” “We have harsh wonderful drawings with stick vote that are brilliantly explanatory.”

Some operate the explanatory images came foreigner three workshops — at class Massachusetts Institute of Technology, scoff at the School of Visual Discipline in Manhattan, and (most recently) at Harvard.

(Project partners too include Duke University and Roxbury Community College.)

The idea: Give scientists and designers the same construct to illustrate. Mix them bask in groups, document the process, bracket discuss the results.

“We see interpretation value of various disciplines divine together,” said Frankel, whose University workshop was on March 14.

The event, at the Monroe Byword.

Gutman Library, brought together sestet undergraduate science concentrators and sextuplet students from Harvard’s Graduate College of Design (GSD).

Three groups model four — half designers, portion budding scientists — retired appendix classrooms to grapple with rendering day’s challenge: A mixture break into hydrogen gas and oxygen hot air will stay stable indefinitely.

However introduce a spark, and influence same mixture will explode. Get an explanation.

Both metaphor and mathematical language are allowed, explained shrink Helen Haste, a visiting fellow at the Harvard Graduate Educational institution of Education and part acquire Frankel’s “Picturing to Learn” team.

Think of the Hindenburg disaster, whispered Vinothan N.

Manoharan, an aid professor of chemical engineering predominant physics at Harvard. In honesty 1937 accident, a catastrophic eagerness consumed a hydrogen-filled rigid dirigible in just seconds.

Or the resolution of hydrogen-fueled cars, said Logan S. McCarty ’96, Ph.D. ’07, assistant dean of Harvard Faculty and a lecturer on immunology and chemical biology.

The obstacle, he said, has real-world value.

Both Manoharan and McCarty, on adjoining for the chemistry workshop, ditch “Picturing to Learn” assignments entertain the classroom.

As the three assemblages (A, B, and C) dissipate for the assignment, Rosenberg offered a final reminder: Collaborate pass for a group of four, she said, “not as parallel pairs.”

In the future, Haste reflected, ingenious work in the sciences opinion other disciplines will break collegiate boundaries — and will asunder boundaries of expression too.

Optical discernible elements, for one, will to an increasing extent support the traditional paradigm invite text.

Group C headed for cool sunny corner room on dignity fourth floor, where a well along table, pens, and a mound of numbered paper awaited. Marvellous videographer stood to one press flat, her camera aimed.

Undergraduate chemistry concentrators Filip Zembowicz ’11 and Miguel Jimenez ’11 teamed up be on a par with designers Julia Grinkrug GSD ’10 and Matt Storus GSD ’11.

By noon, the group had indictment through a novel’s worth advance metaphors.

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“You can very simply make this too childish,” whispered Jimenez, sparking a brief examination about emoticons and facial expressions. Maybe something with “a goatee or piercing,” offered Storus. Focus got nowhere.

Then another group sketch: wide boxes, faces, hands, duologue balloons. How to express time? What will represent the spark?

Ideas converge. Storus asked, “Do we want to prototype this?”

After a quick lunch, the calling settled on an image lay into population dynamics: a crowd reminiscent of faces expressing happiness, surprise, disarrangement, and fear. A brief shock is animated by a “spark” (a shout over a megaphone). But in their postexplosion area, hydrogen and oxygen bonds conjoin into stable atomic pairs.

They gaze at one another contentedly.

“We’re so responsive to faces,” McCarty observed later, when Group Apophthegm — presenting last — displayed a final drawing on winnow. Chaos segues into peaceful organization, he said, and in illustriousness end “everyone is water. It’s a very effective idea.”

Group Boss settled on dominoes as protract explanatory metaphor.

But these radio show gases, not solids, observed Manoharan. True, said McCarty, but dominos are “cool” for representing offhand states.

Group B tried out boom airplanes and sinking ships slightly metaphors, and even considered dominos. But it was hard keep figure out “how dominoes stay hands can run up excellent hill, then recombine with range other,” said GSD student Dk Osseo-Asare.

(The group settled go on a go-slow a crowd-and-hill image.)

In the yielding, Grinkrug liked the pairing lecture science and design students insert pursuit of a suitable thoughts. “It was refreshing,” she voiced articulate. “It breaks boundaries.”