科
Symbols Mind
science
學
ㄎㄜ ㄒㄩㄝˊ kē xué
Two versions of the same picture, and both are free with no account and no watermark. The first has no background at all, which is the one to send your artist — but a phone or computer photo viewer set to dark will show black strokes on dark grey and it can look like nothing downloaded. If that happens, use the second one: identical characters on a plain white background. Either way you get the characters on their own — the square and the faint guide lines you see above are not in the file. Each character is 1000px, so a two-character download is 2000×1000, and the script and layout are the ones you picked.
Script
Characters
Same in both
Layout
Rubbing mode: white on black, as a stone rubbing. The download is unaffected.
Systematic knowledge of the natural world. The Chinese word is a modern import, though the idea of investigating things is native.
Before you commit
Choose with care科 alone means a branch, a department or a school subject. It carries none of the sense of science by itself.
Japanese科學 is 科学 in Japanese, the same word with the same meaning. The traditional 學 is the only thing marking this version as Chinese.
At small sizesTwenty-five strokes across the pair, and 學 is crowded on top. Poor at small sizes or on a tight curve.
Meaning
Science; the sciences as a body of knowledge.
The standard modern word, formed from branch of study plus learning.
Other characters for “science”
What to do next
Pick the script and layout you want above, download the PNG, and send that file to your artist. Ask them to work from the file rather than redrawing the character freehand — that is where strokes go missing.
Related concepts