THE ASSIGNMENT: Draw a picture explaining why the sky is blue.

THE CLASS: Four Harvard physics students and four School of Visual Arts design students.

Even combining their talents, members of the class, assembled for a weekend workshop at the Manhattan art school, found it tough. So many concepts jumbled together: How many colors make up sunlight. Why atmospheric nitrogen scatters blue light more readily than it does red. Why blue’s higher-frequency wavelength allows that. Why the same light hits clouds but leaves them white. And something about “omega to the fourth.”

Image For the program Picturing to Learn, Harvard physics students put their heads together with design students from the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan to draw the science behind why the sky is blue. Credit... Aaron Lee Fineman for The New York Times

“This was a good problem because it’s one of those questions everyone asks in kindergarten,” says Nick Krasney, one of the Harvard students. “And there are so many bad answers, like ‘It’s blue because it reflects the water.’ ”