Today i learned a lot about the preservation of museums art. This was an extremely interesting topic because it combined science and art into its lesson. One way that the preservation of art combined elements of art and science was the use of microscopes to determine the structures of paints. These paint structures can be used to determine whether any additional artist painted over the painting.
In addition to all of this, the advancement in microscopes helps create non invasive ways to analyze a painting. About 10 years ago, scientists used to have to take samples from paintings and analyze them. This would not only cause damage to the painting but sometimes you would need additional samples because your sample did not yield enough information. Now with the new smaller microscopes, scientists are able to analyze the painings wihtout taking samples and get almost the same amount of data that they used to get. If this non invasive data could not derrive the scientists to the answer, then they can precisely take a sample and do it with the large microscopes. The scientific advancements of the new smaller microscopes is greatly helping the art industry.
Another topic that i learned about today was the new sol gels. With these new gels, scientists can now create glass at room temperature. There are many advantages to this. For example, scientists can make fuel cells that can give clean energy to society. These can also be used to glow with florescent lights, which opens the door to artists to be creative.
http://www.chemat.com/html/solgel.html
http://www.viewnews.com/2006/VIEW-Jul-18-Tue-2006/SummerlinSouth/8216423.html
http://www.viewnews.com/2006/VIEW-Jul-18-Tue-2006/SummerlinSouth/8216423.html