In “Phenomenal Moments,” research scientist and photographer Felice Frankel sees science everywhere, in ordinary moments of day to day life, in the kitchen as well as in the wilderness. Inspired by her grandchildren’s interest in her ability to relate everything back to science, Frankel created an interactive nonfiction book that she hopes will make science feel accessible and explore the idea of science truly being everywhere. We spoke with Frankel ahead of her Tuesday event at Porter Square Books in Cambridge. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Where did the idea for this book come from?
I have been making informal images throughout my life, because my background is science and even as a child I was very curious about why things look the way they look. When I had my grandchildren talking to me a couple of years ago, they would sort of make fun of me about, “Grandma, you don’t have to point out everything that’s about science,” but they were interested in what I was saying and what we were seeing. I decided to look at the pictures that I’ve been making and realized that I might have a book here – sort of a guessing game where you see a piece of a picture, then you turn the page and you find out what it is that you’re looking at. I went to my grandson’s science class in New Jersey to show them some of the pictures I had taken.They were painfully honest in not liking some of them, because mostly they weren’t colorful enough. Teenagers like color. But it was fun to hear what they had to say. There was a means of engaging them in the science, indirectly, in a way.
What was the most interesting thing you learned in creating the book?
The reason I made these pictures was because I knew that science was involved, and I started off with a preliminary idea about what the science is. But it was really important that I got it right if I was going to publish a book. And so I did collaborate with researchers over particular images that I was not clear about. The first moment is describing, for example that “While sautéing yellow, orange and red and green peppers for a pasta dish, a glass cover on my pan began to reflect all the wonderful colors.” I had a feeling that there was some condensation going on here, so I knew that was going to be one of the words in bold. When I discussed it with a couple of researchers, they also saw other words. For example, the word “coalescence” is also appropriate for that particular image. So it was basically expanding the science that I knew from the beginning, and with every image, I learned even more. And that’s what my hope is that students and, frankly, grandparents will get from this: They will understand that in each of these images, it is all about science.
Why was it important to you to publish this book?
A lot has to do with where science is in the world and certainly in the United States, and the very disturbing place we are in in terms of trusting science and scientists. The more people would be less intimidated about asking questions, the better off we would be. We’re in a state of mistrust.
What do you think is the biggest misconception people have about science and the natural world?
They don’t know that science is the natural world. They’re frightened of the word. And I do think the research community has some responsibility in that. We don’t have to talk mathematically; we don’t have to talk with jargon. The idea here is to frankly entice them to the world, to actually look at what is around them. We’ve missed the boat in not explaining that literally everything you see at this very moment is about science. And it’s very beautiful. A picture is an entryway into asking questions, into discovery in the end. I am convinced that this is the approach to get more people to understand how beautiful science is.
What do you think is the most important thing people can learn from paying attention to science?
The most important thing is really about having fun. It really is so much fun to delve into why something looks the way it looks. The fantasy is that a teenager, after reading the book and looking at the pictures, they will, at some point during the day, see something that is very similar to what they saw in the book. They will explain it to their grandmother or grandparent, about what it is that they’re seeing, and then even better, would be for them to make their own photograph and start collecting their own phenomenal moments. Wouldn’t that be fun?
Felice Frankel reads from “Phenomenal Moments: Revealing the Hidden Science Around Us” at 7 p.m. Tuesday at Porter Square Books, 1815 Massachusetts Ave., Porter Square, Cambridge. Free.
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