Scientifically literate citizens would be empowered to think critically about the role of science in society and use it as a tool for informed decision making and problem solving in a rapidly changing and developing world. In this study, scientific literacy was viewed as an attribute both industry and the general community could reasonably expect from higher education's graduates. As such, this mixed methods research aimed to identify, document and represent concretely through a rope metaphor the development of scientific literacy amongst a sample of 244 first year university students.