In order to talk about how meaning can be construed from scientific representations we draw on the phenomenological term appresentation. Appresentation refers to those parts of an object that are not readily presented, but experienced as co-present with the presented object. We review a number of scientific representations that students have had reported difficulty with using in certain prescribed situations. Our analysis indicates that representations that are conventionally used in many scientific situations often do not lead students to appresenting the critical aspects of scientific phenomena. Critical aspects of scientific phenomena can range from being present and foregrounded (salient), through present but in the background, to not present at all in the representation at hand. Our discussion suggests that pedagogical implications of these conclusions include the need for teachers to be aware of that their taken-for-granted interpretation of common representations may not be the same as students’ interpretations, especially in unfamiliar or less common situations.