Anchorage and it's Relationship to Physics

      In my physics class yesterday I realized that the slides my Professor was teaching to us were related to what Roland Barthes describes as anchorage. Barthes describes anchorage as giving meaning to the images being shown. He writes “The denominative function corresponds exactly to an anchorage of all the possible (denoted) meanings of the object by recourse to a nomenclature…” This means that of every possible reason for that image shown, anchorage gives the image a specific meaning for what the image is shown. This is related to physics through the use of images depicting what exactly the image is showing through the use of text. This is especially important when learning new theorems or formulas for new material. In physics it is also especially important to draw diagrams when solving many of the problems given to help give an idea of the best way to go about solving it. Without diagrams physics would be extremely difficult, especially when dealing with forces, or vectors. Thus anchorage is needed to give an understanding of what the image is describing, which in turn gives an understanding to what the problem is about.


Update:  Anchorage is also found in the popular lolcat images on the internet. Anchorage is used to provide a  single meaning from a image of a cat doing something funny. Thus in this picture, the cat has somehow found itself in an upward position midair, which the creator of this image decided that it looked like this cat was riding a bike. If the image was presented without the text, it would be hard for the viewer to determine this. With the text "INVISIBLE BIKE" it gives the viewer anchorage, and a better ability to imagine a bicycle beneath the cat.