Graph necklace, Tjep, 2004

The familiar tick of scientific data...in a necklace.

"Modern life seams to be increasingly reliant on numbers that can be transposed into graph's, from the stock exchange to your heart beat, from global warming to traffic congestion rates. This piece of jewelry symbolizes mankind's cartesian way of defining the world, in an object supposed to embody our most emotional aspirations.This jewellery is not about eternal beauty but about results. "

But I'm waiting for the spectrum in a bracelet...

from Dutch designer tjep.

Pi Poles, Robert Wilson

"Bearing a symbol crucial to science, Robert Wilson's pi-shaped power poles also bear a crucial 30 megawatts of power to make science at Fermilab happen. "

Designed and installed in the 1970s, when he was director of Fermilab. The original wooden structures are now being replaced with steel cast to the original dimensions.

A scientist with an eye for design.

Phonofone by Science+sons

In an age of electronic amplification, we've forgotten the power of the simple physical amplification of a sound wave, which used to be the only kind available. scienceandsons remembers:

"Through passive amplification alone, These unique pieces instantly transform any personal music player + earbuds into a sculptural audio console.
Without the use of external power or batteries, the Phonofone inventively exploits the virtues of horn acoustics to boost the audio output of standard earphones to up to 55 decibles* (or roughly the maximum volume of laptop speakers)
Upon connecting active earphones to the Phonofone their trebly buzzing is instantly and profoundly transformed into a warm, rich and resonant sound."

Unsustainable by Greetje van Helmond

Jewelry from saturated sugar solutions, by Greetje van Helmond, via dezeen.

This is the same procedure used for making rock candy, an edible science experiment popular in elementary school classes. Crystals, of course, are simply highly ordered arrangements of atoms or molecules. Once the molecules have begun assembling in an orderly fashion, other molecules will continue adding to the same scheme, it being energetically favorable to continue the existing pattern rather than to fall apart into randomness. Thus the formation of larger and larger crystals. The cords so cleverly used by Greetje simply provide a scaffolding for this natural process to occur.

You can do this in any sort of container you happen to have lying around, but Greetje uses actual chemical glassware. A set-up like this is mundane to scientists but often seen in popular culture as something sinister...bubble bubble toil and trouble...in which wild-eyed scientists concoct foul brews of death and destruction. I love that here, the lab instruments grow objects of delicate beauty.

Quantum Man by Julian Voss-Andreae

A quantum physics student turned sculptor, Julian Voss-Andreae creates scientifically inspired works. This work is itself quantized, composed of units at discrete intervals, but also beautifully conveys the essential ephemeral nature of quantum mechanics, about which it can be quantifiably said that there is no 'there' there.

Capacity by Annie Cattrell

This is not an image of a lung, but of the breath inside it.

Shortlisted for the 2007 Bombay Sapphire prize for excellence in glass design.

More about the artist at the V&A's site.