Felice Frankel and George M. Whitesides. Chronicle Books: San Francisco, 1997. 160 pp. ISBN 0 8118 1394 0. $22.95.

On the Surface of Things is a wonder-book, in the best tradition of image and text working together to lead us to admire, puzzle, and learn. Strange new images capture our attention and demand explanations. The text satisfies us by revealing some of the science and technology and, thereby, some of the secrets of the images. But the words are done in ways that bring us back to the images with renewed astonishment and more questions. Our first response is teased back into new wonders. This is a book to relish and then to pass on to friends and teenage children who wonder what scientists do and why they do it.

The subtitle to the book, Images of the Extraordinary in Science, reveals some of the authors' purpose. More specifically, the book is an essay about the interplay of light with surfaces. The book is also about size. The images do not come with a geologist's hammer in the corner, and some of the mystery comes from this ambiguity about scale.

Migrating bacteria. Photo by Felice Frankel, copyright ©1997.

But more of the mystery comes from looking up close at small things. Part of the image maker's talent is to help us see things that are usually beneath our notice. Surfaces imply interfaces and this book is both of and by interfaces. Felice Frankel is an artist-in-residence and a scientific researcher at MIT; her work has been supported by both the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Science Foundation. She is a photographer, an explorer of landscape architecture who has turned her attention from macro- to microvistas. In both cases, Frankel's work shows us the hand and mind of man working to shape the stuff of nature. In the present book her foil is George Whitesides, Professor of Chemistry at Harvard. He is a leader in shaping our understanding of science and technology. Frankel and Whitesides met at the surface of things and have worked to find ways to make their subjects accessible to others. Frankel's color images awaken interests that are undisturbed by conventional black and white diagrams and other abstracted representations. Images can play tricks on us, however, and I like Frankel's willingness to tell us how she made the images and Whitesides' details about the subject (both are given in a Notes and Readings section at the end). I also like Whitesides' struggle to find words and constructions that open up the underlying science and technology to curious nonspecialists.

Suspensions of small, fluorescent particles. Photo by Felice Frankel, copyright ©1997.

Gel electrophoresis is explained as molecules of DNA driven through molecular brush. Like game animals driven by hunters, the molecules emerge by size. The simile works. "Matter is pools of electrons held together by atomic nuclei." "Light is the ripples when the pools of electrons are disturbed." "After impact, the electrons in a phosphor ring like bells of a carillon: each kind vibrates in a characteristic color." "The molecules of gases are loners. The molecules of liquids are condensed, but disordered: a crowd. The molecules of crystals have the order of the military parade ground." These are helpful translations of contemporary scientific ideas. Occasionally, the words slip off into an awkward anthropomorphism. Less stable becomes less comfortable; molecules are happy, anxious, aggressive, and agoraphobic. "The solid tries to hide its nakedness by pulling the liquid over it: the liquid resists and does its best to remain a modest, compact drop." My own view is that we should resist the temptation to use these tricks. In general, I think that Frankel and Whitesides have resisted and have discovered powerful sets of images and metaphors that are both exciting and honest.