The Art in Science Physics professor Ashwin Vaidya and
mathematics professor Mika Munakata are exploring the connection
between creativity and scientific success. In a recent study,
they found that university students tend to rank the sciences
among the “least creative” subjects. To address that perception,
they engaged students in the study of the connection between
science, mathematics and creativity through a photography
contest. To enter, students had to explain the physics laws that
made their images possible. Their research led to building a
course in creative thinking and to a grant from the American
Physics Society to fund two projects: The Art of Making Science,
a joint project between the College of Arts and the College of
Science and Mathematics at Montclair State University and The
Science of Making Art, a collaboration between the University
and the Liberty Science Center, which will result in an
interactive exhibit about the relationship between the two
disciplines.