Phenomenal Moments: Photographs That Illuminate The Science Behind Our World

“I created Phenomenal Moments: Revealing the Hidden Science around Us as a gentle nudge,” says author Felice Frankel, “especially for the young, and just as importantly for their parents — to recognize that science isn’t separate from our lives. It’s everywhere.”

Enlisting readers to “be the scientist” through vivid fine art photographs, internationally acclaimed science photographer Frankel zooms in and out on beautiful and brilliant moments all around us in her new book to reveal the chemical, natural, or physical processes — from viscosity and venation to chlorophyll and capillary action — behind scientific phenomena. In doing so, Frankel is a bit of an iconoclast, not acquiescing to higher education’s occasional detachment from the broader public. With stunning, crisp, and detailed photography, she unveils the minutia of our world in microscopic scale, allowing us to slow down and consider the beauty in everyday systems at work.

The Intersection of Science and Photography

Basic science sets the foundation for future innovation. It starts with curiosity about the world around us and grows into intellectual questioning. The United Nations affirms that scientists need more effective strategies for adapting global concepts to local contexts. Communicating the importance of their findings is an important step to inspire understanding and change, especially at the intersection of disciplines.

And that intersection is where Frankel works — as a research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the department of Chemical Engineering with additional support from Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science and Engineering. “Everything we notice, everything we touch, everything we wonder about has a scientific story behind its appearance,” she notes. “Even as a child, I found myself asking why something looked the way it did, paying close attention to the patterns, reflections, and small surprises in the world around me.”

That spirit of inquisitiveness continued on into her career as a scientist. Rather than adopting a silo approach, in which each content area is isolated from the other, Frankel founded Image and Meaning workshops and conferences, the purpose of which was to develop new approaches to promote the public understanding of science through visual expression.

She recognizes that photographers and scientists have a lot in common. They test out combinations of color, materials, and processes with the goal to originate something new and revealing. As they delve into new realms, they uncover mysteries of nature in a way that extends our understanding of the world around us.

Frankel’s work is an invitation to engage with and understand our surroundings, both visible and hard to see — so we open up opportunities to experience what she calls “everyday wonder.” Earlier in her career, she developed and instructed the first online MOOC (Massive Online Open Course) for edX, addressing science and engineering photography. (Want to join in the fun? The course’s 34 tutorials and supplemental materials are available on MIT OpenCourseWare.)

As a research scientist, she captures images of research in various labs. Because of this everyday exposure to various scientific phenomena, she has been able to discern connections that might escape the rest of us during our daily routines. She believes “you will understand what you are seeing” when stepping away from the mundane and attempting to observe it with a new perspective.

But why choose to write a book for 21st century teens? They’re not the usual academic audience. Frankel explains her rationale.

If we can explain something as consequential as global warming, for example, in a way that is visually accessible—honest, clear, and welcoming—we can help more people understand how profoundly these phenomena shape all of our lives. Phenomenal Moments is my attempt to spark that awareness, one image at a time.

To “spark that awareness” in Phenomenal Moments, Frankel organizes the book into five sections that explore light and shadow, form, traces left behind, transformations, and surfaces. Each section opens with an image that demonstrates the theme of the chapter. Each full-sized image is accompanied by a description of how Frankel made the image or a personal anecdote, noted as a “moment.”

This is followed by the “phenomenon,” which is a description of the science involved in what the viewer sees. She has created this pairing with the hope that “you will remember these images as you go about your daily life.”

Let’s look at a couple of the images Frankel has provided to us at CleanTechnica and see how she develops phenomenal moments in science and photography.

The mystery of autumn leaves: As she picked up leaves that seemed to be in the middle of the famous New England color change, Frankel found it compositionally better to make an arrangement of two leaves rather than just using one object. That moment translated into her own curiosity about why leaves turn color in autumn. She learned that the colors are caused by the breakdown of the green pigment called chlorophyll. No longer needing energy from sunlight, the chlorophyll is not replenished, and yellow and red pigments emerge. These color changes are an example of autumn pigment cycling.

How soda brings effervescence: This moment of bubbles forming after pouring carbonated water into a glass came to life after Frankel considered the elements in the image and wondered if a change to more that one of those elements would enhance the photo. She explains that the phenomenon of these bubbles is carbon dioxide that is dissolved in the liquid under pressure. Pouring releases the pressure, and the carbon dioxide comes out of the solution as effervescence. Bubbles form due to imperfections on the glass and serve as nucleation sites where the carbon dioxide molecules can gather.

Final Thoughts about Phenomenal Moments: A Really Good Match for Curious Teens

As we immerse ourselves in the December holiday season, we start to think about ways to express our love for the important people in our lives. This book offers a compelling, non-digital screen approach to imagery, and lots of teens would be drawn in by the combination of intriguing science photos, stories about how a research scientist discovers science in her own life, and the underlying explanations for everyday occurrences.

Frankel speaks to the teens who she hopes will read and absorb her cross disciplinary narrative, hoping they may be inspired to take their own pictures. The book’s confluence of modalities might actually do just that: inspire teens to grab their own smart phones and expand their photograph-taking repertoire to capture new ways of seeing familiar natural objects.

In many ways, this book is my response to what I see as a gap in how the research community speaks to the public. We haven’t fully embraced how powerful images can be in opening a window into complex ideas, or how visual language can invite curiosity rather than shut it down.

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