Lecture: Scientific Visualization Introduction to Scientific Visualization

This lesson describes what scientific visualization is and the uses of visualization in a Computational Chemistry and Material Science.

Scientific Visualization Introduction

Visually represent scientific data from atoms and molecules to clouds and stars.

Scientific Visualization and Animations

No data implies drawing a cartoons. Scientific visualization takes data from simulations or models. The power of scientific visualization is the ability to display all the data from a simulation or computer experiment. This allows for relationships among the data to be more easily determined.

There are numerous ways to display the data and uncover the relationships among the data:

Three Dimensional Displays

Three dimensional displays can give:

  1. True spatial information
  2. Relative positions
  3. Relative sizes
  4. Ability to overlay information on maps
  5. Displaying grids can give orientations

Photo realism versus model representations

For most scientific visualizations, a representaion of the object, a model, is sufficient. Thus, this lecture will focus on representaions and not photo-realistic visualizations.

A frame

depicting one of the states from a combinatoric geometry problem called polyominoes. This display conveys information about relationships but does not realistically display objects.

How To

How to do scientific visualization: First some data.

There are many ways to display scientific data. The following presentation shows many of the different forms.

A display of the gcn molecule.

This is a complex protein. The main backbone is represented as a ribbon, the helical twist is clearly shown and the 'sidechains' are displayed as colored sticks.

Simple ball and stick representations elucidate structure.

Using complex surfaces and volumes for model results can aid in understanding the science. Results from quantum chemistry to find the distribution of electric charge in a molecule.



Author: Ken Flurchick