The Art of Science

The 2010 Art of Science competition was hosted by Princeton University and garnered over 115 submissions from undergraduates, faculty, research staff, graduate students, and alumni. Seen here are the contests' top three exhibits. (Princeton University Art of Science Competition)

The first place finisher at this years competition is a picture of a Hall-effect thruster (plasma accelerator) plume. The Hall thruster, is a piece of electric propulsion technology that uses magnetic and electric fields to ionize and accelerate propellant. (Princeton University Art of Science Competition/Jerry Ross)

The second place finisher depicts the experimental investigations of David Nagib that employs energy-saving compact fluorescent light bulbs to excite colored photocatalysts. (Princeton University Art of Science Competition/David Nagib)

The third place exhibit shows the intricate patterns created by  neutron stars when planets move as a result of gravitational forces (Princeton University Art of Science Competition/Tim Koby)

This picture shows the Lithium Lorentz Force Accelerator in an experiment investigating the acceleration mechanisms of a thruster. (Princeton University Art of Science Competition/Dan Lev)

This picture displays a disordered network of dielectric material that blocks light of any polarization and from any direction in the plane over a substantial range of frequencies. (Princeton University Art of Science Competition/Marian Florescu, Paul J. Steinhardt, Salvatore Torquato)

In this picture of a plastic transistor, the plastic is molded into interdigitated electrodes which creat the yellowish-orange bars seen in the center. (Princeton University Art of Science Competition/Kwangseok Lee, Lynn Loo, Philip Chew)

Seen here is a cartoon rendering of the three dimensional template of a peptide (right) as it binds to a Human leukocyte antigen (left). (Princeton University Art of Science Competition/Meghan Bellows)

This image depicts an experiment in which non-linear material was used to extract the energy from noise which created an obsured image of the Olympic rings. (Princeton University Art of Science Competition/Dmitry V. Dylov and Jason W. Fleischer)

In this image, a sphere is submerged near the free surface of a tow-tank filled with silicon oil to create well-structured flow patterns. (Princeton University Art of Science Competition/Shelley Chan, Josue Sznitman, Alexander J. Smits)

Here is a picture of the frozen section of a mouse eye that shows connective tissue, blood vessels, sclera, and part of the retina. The green parts of this image are the calcium-binding protein Calretinin, which have been stained with an antibody while the blue parts are the cell nuclei stained with Hoescht 33258. (Princeton University Art of Science Competition/Praveena Joseph-de Saram and Michael J. Berry, II)

This image was created as a drop of water collides with a water surface to examine the surface tension effects in water. (Princeton University Art of Science Competition/David Heinz)

This image depicts the process of magnetic reconnection in which the magnetic field will end up being confined within magnetic islands (represented as red blobs in this image), with high-energy particles meandering among the islands (represented as yellow tracks in this image). (Princeton University Art of Science Competition/Lorenzo Sironi, Anatoly Spitkovsky)

Seen here is a RNA structure created by a software tool that calculates the minimum free energy (delta G) for folding a given nucleic acid sequence via intra-molecular interactions. (Princeton University Art of Science Competition/John Bracht)

The image seen here was created as part of the calibration of a spectrometer for the Thomson scattering system on the Lithium Tokamak Experiment in which the colors represent the intensity of light (Princeton University Art of Science Competition/Craig Jacobson)

The heart-shaped light seen in this picture was created as a result of a tightly focused laser beam of light that is capable of holding microscopic particles stable in three dimensions (Princeton University Art of Science Competition/Nick Bax)