There is increasing recognition of the multimodal representational nature of science discovery practices and the roles of multiple and multimodal representations in students' meaning making in science (Lemke, 1998; Tytler, Prain, Hubber, & Waldrip, 2013; Tang, "International Journal of Science Education," 38(13), 2069-2095, 2016). However, research in this area is only starting to explore how these different modal meanings interact (Tytler, Prain, Aranda, Ferguson, & Gorur, 2020) and particularly of the nature of the 'transduction' (Airey & Linder, "Journal of Research in Science Teaching: The Official Journal of the National Association for Research in Science Teaching," 46(1), 27-49, 2009) or 're-description' (Lehrer & Schauble, 2013) of one modal representation to another and their coordination in model-based reasoning in science. This paper explores ways in which groups of secondary students orchestrated multimodal representations to gain an understanding of the lever principle in a collaborative learning environment of a Science of Learning Research Classroom. The analysis of video data and student artefacts suggests that mathematical formulations on their own were limited in allowing students to satisfactorily engage with science ideas and that a key feature of cross-modal translation is the flexibility in application of these ideas afforded by the different modes and understanding the nature of these interactions. Using a Peircean socio-semiotic approach (Peirce, 1992, 1998) and Pickering's notion of scientific research involving a 'mangle of practice' (Pickering, 1995, p. 23), this paper argues that a robust understanding of the lever principle necessarily involves students coordinating a range of modal representations, including visual-spatial, manipulative, embodied and abstract mathematical drawing on the distinctive affordances each brings to learning. We also describe the way these representations push back on learners in unexpected ways.