From ORD’s Art of Science Exhibit: Visualization of noise from a jet engine

Scientists, it turns out, are an arty bunch.

A new exhibit at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport shows us that “in the pursuit of better batteries, cures for diseases, clean energy sources or a better understanding of the world around us, scientists often find unexpected beauty.”

You can see some of that unexpected beauty in the photos from Argonne National Laboratory’s annual “Art of Science” photo contest, which are on display through the end of the year in the hallways connecting Terminals 2 and 3 (next to the Rotunda) at O’Hare International Airport.

It looks like a tropical underwater scene, but it’s a scanning electron micrograph of ‘oval’ shaped carbon particles that can be used as an anode for lithium ion batteries.

For more information about the photos here, and to see more images from the contest, see the Art of Science Flickr gallery.

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