Everything Is Made of Atoms Poster

Overview

Description

This poster aligns zooms into three familiar objects - a human heart, a butterfly's wing, and a laptop computer. Using the conventions of visual perspective the image travels in one continuous “landscape” from the human scale at the top to the atomic scale in the foreground. As the scale gets smaller and smaller, these disparate objects resolve to individual atoms, highlighting the concept that everything is made of atoms.

Credits

Organization

Exploratorium

Exploratorium

Attributed to

The Exploratorium

Checklist

Scientist reviewed

Peer reviewed

Visitor evaluation

Tags

art & nano, nanodays, poster, scale, size, zooms

1 Resources

Combination_poster.pdf

4.5 MB

0 Comments

1 Evaluations

Illustrations – Human Bloodstream and Butterfly

Major Findings

    •    Most visitors thought the two illustrations showed how one thing is made of other things.  Although, when asked what they thought everything was made of, slightly less than half said molecules or atoms.  This may be because about half (8/14) of the visitors recognized the depiction of the atoms used in the illustrations.
•    Most visitors recognized the macroscale objects in the human illustration.  Slightly fewer were able to identify the butterfly as a butterfly.  In both cases, visitors were much less familiar with the micro and nanoscale objects and recognized few of them, particularly for the butterfly illustration.
•    In general, a majority of the visitors saw the illustrations as a zoom.  There were a few points of confusion, however:
      −    Some (5/14) visitors did not realize that the small balls in the background were the same as the big balls in the foreground, even though they all represent atoms of about the same size.
      −     Some visitors (5/14) were unsure if objects on the same level (e.g., red blood cells and platelet) were in the same size scale. 
•    We could not determine if visitors wanted labels to identify the objects in the illustrations; half said yes, and the other said no.

Recommendations for practice

•    If only one poster can be display, consider using the illustration that zooms into the human bloodstream since visitors seem more familiar with the objects depicted.