Phenomenal Moments: Revealing the Hidden Science Around Us - by Felice Frankel (Hardcover)

About the Book

"Visual learners rejoice! A world-renowned photographer imagines the intersection of art, science, and the ordinary-extraordinary world around us in a stunning work of interactive nonfiction. Enlisting readers to "be the scientist" through vivid fine-art photographs, internationally acclaimed science photographer Felice Frankel zooms in and out on beautiful and brilliant moments all around us to reveal the chemical, natural, or physical processes--from viscosity and venation to chlorophyll and capillary action--behind scientific phenomena. Organized into five thematic sections that explore light and shadow, form, surfaces, traces left behind, and transformation, this ingenious book is both a visual feast to savor in its own right and a guessing game that trains readers to look in a more layered, curious, and questioning way. Close-up spreads offer abstract clues to phenomena revealed at the page turn olor images of similar scientific "moments" broaden context. Sophisticated and inspiring, this invitation to engage with and understand our surroundings--the worlds we can see and the worlds we can't--is a ticket to everyday wonder."--

Book Synopsis

Visual learners rejoice! A world-renowned photographer imagines the intersection of art, science, and the ordinary-extraordinary world around us in a stunning work of interactive nonfiction.

Enlisting readers to "be the scientist" through vivid fine-art photographs, internationally acclaimed science photographer Felice Frankel zooms in and out on beautiful and brilliant moments all around us to reveal the chemical, natural, or physical processes--from viscosity and venation to chlorophyll and capillary action--behind scientific phenomena. Organized into five thematic sections that explore light and shadow, form, surfaces, traces left behind, and transformation, this ingenious book is both a visual feast to savor in its own right and a guessing game that trains readers to look in a more layered, curious, and questioning way. Close-up spreads offer abstract clues to phenomena revealed at the page turn. Full-color images of similar scientific "moments" broaden context. Sophisticated and inspiring, this invitation to engage with and understand our surroundings--the worlds we can see and the worlds we can't--is a ticket to everyday wonder.

Review Quotes

An interactive children's debut. . . .The result is a thought-provoking primer on the importance of engaging in careful observation to understand the world.
--Publishers Weekly

This visually stimulating book dives deep into beautiful, rarely seen patterns of the natural and human-made worlds and the science behind them. Exquisitely highlights the often-ignored beauty surrounding us, igniting scientific curiosity.
--Kirkus Reviews

A beautiful book. . . .A great look at science in nature from an artistic perspective.
--Booklist

Beyond the science, this is also an engaging look at the artist and her art, as Frankel explains throughout the cameras she used, why she chose them, and how they work. Accessible and breezy, this would make a valuable resource in a cross-curriculum unit on art and science.
--Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books

About the Author

Felice C. Frankel is a research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the department of Chemical Engineering with additional support from Mechanical Engineering. She joined MIT in 1994. She is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. She was previously a senior research fellow in Harvard University's Faculty of Arts and Sciences in the Initiative for Innovative Computing and a visiting scholar at Harvard Medical School's Department of Systems Biology. She's the author of six books of science photography, including Picturing Science and Engineering. She has been covered in Nature, Science, Physics Today, National Geographic, and other science media. This is her first book for young readers. She lives Massachusetts.