• Question: what exactly do you do?It sounds a bit complicated

    Asked by maya12 to Roy, Kate on 10 Mar 2014.
    • Photo: Kate Nicholson

      Kate Nicholson answered on 10 Mar 2014:

      Lol, well that depends on which project!

      The books – I run the machine that takes the measurements that allow us to identify the pigments. I rely on a team of people to help me with this, our historical expert to tell me which books to look at and the history of them, a chemistry professor to make sure I’m running the right experiment and to get money to fund the equipment, the library staff and conservators who patiently get me the books and set them up for me.
      The science behind it is when you shine a light on the pigment, it will make the molecules in that pigment wobble a bit more and lose a bit of energy when it does this. The machine can measure this very small change in energy in the light that is bounced back (just like your eyes see colours) but its so accurate it can make a graph of this that is like a fingerprint for that molecule. We compare the fingerprints of the pigments in the books to pigments we have bought and match them to find out what they are.

      The crystals – I grow tiny little crystals inside of water droplets inside of oil. (Think of a containter a million times smaller than your hair) then use a variety of machines to identify them.

      The teaching – pretty much like what I’m doing now, answering questions to students online and live chats.

    • Photo: Roy Adkin

      Roy Adkin answered on 11 Mar 2014:

      Hello,
      Sometimes it is difficult to explain things when the words used are complicated but are the only ones you can use…I’ll do my best 🙂

      I am trying to make a chemical that will shine light when it is put under a UV lamp…just like they use in a shop to check if a bank note is real. I will then take a meteorite and put the chemical on the meteorite which I hope will react with some of the molecules in it making it stick to the rock. I will shine the UV lamp on the rock so that the chemical will shine so I can work out what molecules are in the meteorite, where they are and how much there is.
      I hope that answers your question 🙂

Comments