Physics in Paint
UWEC student portrays science through art
Judy Berthiaume, UW-Eau Claire |
Michelle Gervais has always loved to solve problems, but she also has had a lifelong passion for art. “In math classes, I loved that moment where it suddenly clicked and I was able to figure out the problem,” says Gervais, a UW-Eau Claire senior. “But I also love art.”
When it came time to declare a major, rather than choose between her passions, Gervais decided to pursue them both: She will graduate later this year with bachelor’s degrees in both physics and art. “I decided on physics because it had that same element as math but it also seemed more applicable to the real world to me,” says Gervais, a native of Hamburg, Wis. “I added the art major because I knew that I couldn’t do without art in my life and I wanted to learn more about it.”
“I’m hoping that they will help people better understand these ideas or see them in a new light. I want to bring physics to the art world and art to the physics world.” – Michelle Gervais, UWEC student, who created artwork based on physics principles
This spring, Gervais literally brought the two worlds together by creating a series of paintings that each represent an idea or concept from physics. “Their purpose is to help bridge the gap between the physics world and the non-physics world,” Gervais says. “I’m hoping that they will help people better understand these ideas or see them in a new light. I want to bring physics to the art world and art to the physics world.”
After earning her art and physics degrees from UW-Eau Claire later this year, Gervais plans to work for a year and then enroll in graduate school to pursue an advanced degree in accelerator or nuclear physics.
Her paintings will be on display on the second floor of Phillips Science Hall through the summer. She described two of them below in her own words.
‘5U’
This piece (pictured above) is based on a particle accelerator located at the University of Notre Dame. The blue form on the left is the tank where the particle beam is formed; it is then sent down the grey pipeline. A beam of particles is composed of either all positive or all negative charges, and because of this, it constantly wants to expand since like charges repel each other.
For experiments, a well-focused beam is needed so the beam needs to be held together somehow. One of the ways this is done is with magnetic quadrupoles; these are the red box forms that enclose the pipeline in the painting. They use magnetic fields to shape the beam and compress it back down.
The green lines in the upper part of the painting show the shape of the beam through the pipeline, the top one is the x-axis, and the bottom is the y-axis. They show how the initially expanding beam is bent back down and focused.
I used a combination of voluminous objects and flat lines to add variation. The line work also gives the painting a diagrammatic feel, which helps point toward a mechanical subject matter.
‘Bernoulli’
This piece is based on the Bernoulli Principle, which states that where the velocity of a fluid is high the pressure it exerts is low and where the velocity is low it exerts high pressure. This principle is behind the way airplanes work.
In this painting, the two forms represent cross-sections of wings and they show how, as the streamlines of air go around them, the air going over the curved surface is compressed and now has a smaller pipe to go through. The background lines are flowing and fluid to emphasize the fact that the air is being treated as a fluid. With the form on the right, its attack angle is too high and so the air can no longer wrap around underneath to follow its surface. When this happens turbulence occurs.
I wanted to give this piece an overall organic feel to compensate for the mechanical nature of the subject matter. To do this, I used soft brushstrokes and cropped the image to make it feel like a close-up.
Judy Berthiaume is a senior editor on the Integrated Marketing and Communications staff at UW-Eau Claire.
