SCIENCE AS ART

Hidden Beauties Of Materials Revealed In Exhibit

SOPHIE WILKINSON

Microfilaments of the cellular protein actin form eerie webbed chambers in a scarlet image captured with a fluorescence microscope by Irene Y. Tsai and Masahiro Kimura, researchers at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. This and other beautiful graphics, produced by scientists at the Materials Research Science & Engineering Center (MRSEC), have been assembled into a display on campus by Linda Strzegowski, assistant to MRSEC Director Thomas P. Russell. Russell created the image at far right by viewing a block copolymer film of uneven thickness through a reflection optical microscope. K. Amanda Leach and Zhiqun Lin used a fluorescence confocal microscope to record the concentric green and gray bands that show the variance in thickness of a polymer film heated above its glass-transition temperature. Strzegowski, who hopes to display the exhibit in galleries, says, "The number of images with the potential to be viewed as art seems infinite."

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