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Science comic books

Some time before Christmas I came across (via Twitter, sorry I can’t remember who) a listing of comic books that focus on science. The list is on a University of Texas at Dallas web space for their CINDI educational website. From the CINDI home page,

The Coupled Ion Neutral Dynamics Investigation (CINDI) is a joint NASA/US Air Force funded ionospheric (upper atmosphere) plasma sensors built by the Center for Space Sciences at the University of Texas at Dallas. This instrument package is now flying on the Air Force’s Communication/Navigation Outage Forecast Satellite (C/NOFS) launched in spring 2008. On this site you will find a collection of teaching and education resources for grades 6-9 about the CINDI project, the Earth’s atmosphere, space weather, the scale in the Earth-Moon system, satellites and rockets and more.

Amongst other outreach initiatives, they’ve produced a series of ‘Cindi’ comic books. Here’s a copy of one of the covers.

)”]This particular issue is intended for students from grades 6 – 9.

The Cindi series was featured in an article by Dan Stillman for NASA (US National Aeronautics and Space Administration). From the article,

… Cindi, a spiky-haired android space girl, and her two space dogs, Teks and Taks, are stars of a comic book series that just released its second installment. With more than enough colorful pictures to go around, the comic books serve up a hearty helping of knowledge about the CINDI mission and the ionosphere, with a side of humor.

“Science is threatening to a lot of people. And even if it’s not threatening, most people have this misconception that ‘science is too hard for me to understand,'” said Hairston, [Mark Hairston]who together with Urquhart [Mary Urquhart] dreamed up the Cindi character and storyline. “But a comic book is not threatening. It’s pretty, it’s entertaining, and it’s easy to understand. So we can get people to read — and read all the way to the end.

“It grabs their interest and attention, and once we have that, we can then smuggle an amazing amount of scientific ideas and concepts into their minds.”

Even for Cindi, it’s no easy task to explain how atoms become ions and what NASA’s CINDI instruments do as they fly aboard an Air Force research satellite. The first Cindi comic book — “Cindi in Space,” published in 2005 — breaks the ice with an analogy involving Cindi’s dogs.

Getting back to where I started, the organizers have created a list of other science-focused comic books including a series from the Solar-Terrestrial Environment Laboratory (STEL) at  Nagoya University (Japan),which are manga-influenced. At this time, nine have been translated into English. Here’s copy of the cover from their latest,

Cover for What is the Sun-Climate Relationship? manga (STEL project at Nagoya University, Japan)

The Cindi folks also mention Jim Ottaviani and G. T. Labs, which has produced a number of graphic novels/comic books including, Bone Sharps, Cowboys, and Thunder Lizards about 19th century dinosaur bone hunters and a very bitter feud between two of them, and Dignifying Science which features stories about women scientists. I went over to the G. T. Labs website where they were featuring their latest, Feynman which was published in August 2011 (from the Feynman webpage),

Physicist . . . Nobel winner . . . bestselling author . . . safe-cracker.

Feynman tells the story of a great man’s life, from his childhood in Long Island to his work on the Manhattan Project and the Challenger disaster. You’ll see him help build the first atomic bomb, give a lecture to Einstein, become a safecracker, try not to win a Nobel Prize (but do it anyway), fall in love, learn how to become an artist, and discover the world.

Anyone who ever wanted to know more about quantum electrodynamics, the fine art of the bongo drums, the outrageously obscure nation of Tuva, or the development and popularization of physics in the United States need look no further!

Feynman explores a wonderful life, lived to the fullest.

Ottaviani’s Dec. 14, 2011 blog posting notes this about Feynman,

Though come to think of it, the context is sort of crazy, as in Feynman is nominated for the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s [AAAS] SB&F Prize, and it was also featured on Oprah.com’s “BookFinder” last week.

Congratulations to Ottaviani and G. T. Labs. (Sidebar: The AAAS 2012 annual meeting will be in Vancouver, Canada this February.)