Visualization of Natural Phenomena

by David C Nagel In the last five years visualization has gone from the lab to become a desktop technology for many scientists. Images and 3-D renderings of data sets and mathematical models have evolved from the high-priced hardware and customized software of graphics professionals to low-cost, off-the-shelf commercial software running on personal computers. fu such, scientific visualization has taken its place beside mathematical modeling as an everyday means of interacting with one's data. This has significantly changed both the amount and the quality of information that scientists are able to extract from raw data, and has effectively established a new paradigm for scientific computing. In addi­ tion, new, low-cost hardware and software technologies such as CD-ROMs, digital video, and Apple's QuickTime time-based media of image and and compression technologies have enabled large amounts animation data to be easily accessible to the average researcher or teacher through the personal computer. However, little has been done in the way of providing a context within which the researcher or teacher could learn which approaches might be best suited for a given problem. Furthermore, most scientists are unfamiliar with the terminology and concepts in modern computer graphics, which simply steepens the learning curve for them to apply the new technologies to their work. fu a result, researchers and teachers are not yet taking full advantage of the new paradigm.