Visual communication tends to transcend barriers; it attracts and communicates where other methods might intimidate. For that reason, Picturing to Learn has developed another important strand. We are bringing together seemingly disparate student communities in collaborative workshops. Small groups of design and science students are working together for one and a half days to develop new approaches to the visual explanation of science. Science students and design/art students who engage in face-to-face conversations about how to best visually represent an idea all benefit from the interaction — science students learn about design and communication, and design students learn about science.

Harvard science student Antonio and SVA design student Hyun-Jung discuss and sketch their ideas about the scattering of sunlight.

Antonio and Hyun-Jung work together to create this series of color-coded graphs. Hyan-Jung's suggestions result in the striking color and the shape of the waves, while Antonio's emphasize mathematical relations.

SVA students Esther Wu and Steve Smith discuss their interpretations of MIT science student drawings.

The drawing above the line is the first "unsuccessful" collaborative drawing – the students attempted an anthropomorphic interpretation and discovered its limitations.

Below the line is the group's final collaborative drawing. Included in the drawing (just to the right of this image) is the following caption, "boiling point is proportional to secondary bond strength."

Harvard science student Max explains the science to Esther, who implements his ideas. The pair's final drawing employs only red and blue. They decided that the full rainbow of color was distracting.

In the end, Max and Esther decide to use a multi-step drawing, providing increasingly magnified views with each step. Max explains that "splitting it up into different zoom levels allows us to show each detail that we considered important, without the details being lost in one big picture."

Nick and Josh draw an analogy to two teams of marathon runners who encounter potholes on the road. Red marathon runners have long strides (analogous to long-wavelength light from the red end of the spectrum). Blue marathon runners have short strides (analogous to short-wavelength light from the blue end of the spectrum). The road is filled with potholes (analogous to particles in the atmosphere). The blue marathon runners hit potholes more frequently than the red marathon runners because they hit the ground more frequently on account of their shorter strides. When they hit a pothole, they must exit the course (analogous to Rayleigh scattering by particles in the atmosphere). Josh said: "we wanted for the audience's natural expectations of this illustration to match with what we were trying to teach, and not make it too strange overall."

After initial explorations, Masha and Steve draw an analogy: a bouncer who allows tall people to enter a nightclub but sends short people left and right to the toy store and cinema respectively (this is analogous to short-wavelength blue light being scattered away by particles in the atmosphere).

MIT science student Cory makes a suggestion while explaining the science to SVA design student Josh.

All eight students, in their final conversation, gather around the whiteboard and select which components from the initial 4 drawings (created in pairs) to use in the final group drawing.

The group of seven students working on their second attempt at a collaborative drawing explaining the relationship between secondary bonding and boiling point.

The final group drawing incorporates several components from the initial, more abstract drawings.

Interesting note: After the workshop, students independently contacted each other to discuss ways to expand on this final image. Those conversations will be posted later.