Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Editors’ Preface
- How Well Do Facts Travel?
- Part One Introduction
- Part Two Matters of Fact
- Part Three Integrity and Fruitfulness
- Part Four Companionship and Character
- TWELVE Packaging Small Facts for Re-Use: Databases in Model Organism Biology
- THIRTEEN Designed for Travel: Communicating Facts through Images
- FOURTEEN Using Models to Keep Us Healthy: The Productive Journeys of Facts across Public Health Research Networks
- FIFTEEN The Facts of Life and Death: A Case of Exceptional Longevity
- SIXTEEN The Love Life of a Fact
- Index
- References
THIRTEEN - Designed for Travel: Communicating Facts through Images
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Editors’ Preface
- How Well Do Facts Travel?
- Part One Introduction
- Part Two Matters of Fact
- Part Three Integrity and Fruitfulness
- Part Four Companionship and Character
- TWELVE Packaging Small Facts for Re-Use: Databases in Model Organism Biology
- THIRTEEN Designed for Travel: Communicating Facts through Images
- FOURTEEN Using Models to Keep Us Healthy: The Productive Journeys of Facts across Public Health Research Networks
- FIFTEEN The Facts of Life and Death: A Case of Exceptional Longevity
- SIXTEEN The Love Life of a Fact
- Index
- References
Summary
Introduction
Visual images can be effective devices for communicating facts. Yet this does not imply that whenever images propagate the facts automatically come along – nor do facts that travel in images always travel well. The relation of images, facts and their travels is more complex. The complex relationship will be explored in this text for the case of microscopy images in the field of nanotechnology and their travels both through scientific publications and popular media.
Nanotechnology researchers produce images using probe microscopy, such as scanning tunnelling microscopy (STM) and atomic force microscopy (AFM), and electron microscopy. Unlike optical microscopy, which resolves structures in the range of millimetres and fractions thereof, these types of microscopy operate at the level of atoms and attain atomic resolution. Scientists use the instruments to image and analyse atomic and molecular structures. But importantly, probe microscopes also allow researchers to produce and manipulate such nanoscale structures. Through the exploitation of quantum mechanical effects, these instruments are employed to produce objects (e.g., materials) with novel properties. This potential and practice is considered a defining and characteristic constituent of nanotechnology (cf. Baird et al. 2004; Mody 2004; Daston and Galison 2007, chap. 7; Hennig 2010).
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- How Well Do Facts Travel?The Dissemination of Reliable Knowledge, pp. 349 - 375Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010
References
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