An Artist's Works through the Eyes of a Physicist: Graphic Illustration of Particle Symmetries

The paper presents remarks by a physicist and a graphic artist on an artwork series produced by the artist. They associate the colors and twists represented in these graphics with the properties of subatomic particles--their structures and connections. The authors use graphical representation to visualize the inner structure of atoms, the classification of quarks and the metaphorical names of abstract physical properties. No textbooks that make visible these basic properties by means of art are currently available. Artistic visualization brings these "mysterious" physical objects closer to the understanding of students and the general public and leaves physicists better able to discover new secrets of the internal structure of quarks and their properties.