Multidisciplinary Learning: Redox Chemistry and Pigment History Marcie B. Wiggins, † Emma Heath, †,‡ and Jocelyn Alca ́ ntara-García* ,‡ † Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry, University of Delaware, Newark, Delaware 19716, United States ‡ Department of Art Conservation, University of Delaware, Newark, Delaware 19716, United States * S Supporting Information ABSTRACT: The interface of art and science provides a broad range of educational and collaborative projects at various learning stages. Therefore, the use of historic artists’ materials for teaching chemistry is receiving more attention. We prepared and used copper acetate (verdigris pigment) for a series of interconnected, lab-based activities, which can be applied to high- school-level chemistry, to undergraduate general chemistry, and further to heritage conservation science research for emerging art conservators. The synthesis and degradation processes of artists’ materials like this pigment allow instructors to illustrate scientific concepts like redox chemistry, while extending the vision of science to arenas beyond the classroom. KEYWORDS: High School/Introductory Chemistry, First-Year Undergraduate/General, Graduate Education/Research, Interdisciplinary/Multidisciplinary, Laboratory Instruction, Hands-On Learning/Manipulatives, Applications of Chemistry, Dyes/Pigments, Oxidation/Reduction, Undergraduate Research ■ INTRODUCTION Interdisciplinary classes are becoming increasingly popular, as numerous workshops, 1 projects, 2-4 and courses 5-9 illustrate. These efforts merge the arts and humanities with science, which has proven successful at illustrating challenging topics in science curricula. 10-12 Emerging art conservators, as students, are preparing themselves for the challenge of keeping our material cultural heritage safe. This requires incorporating more science into art conservation curricula. Art conservation students learn hands-on and preventive con- servation techniques, connoisseurship, (art) history, docu- mentation, and applied conservation science, to mention just a few areas of the vast curriculum. Conservation professionals must learn fundamental principles of chemistry and physics, as well as some characterization techniques. Because of students’ interest in applied material science, in addition to time constraints, accelerated degradation, often referred to as “accelerated aging” or “artificial aging”, allows us to replicate chemical phenomena that students can easily relate to historic, “naturally degraded” objects. Although the interest of this audience is very specific, similar experiments can be successfully adapted for college and high school students, who are not necessarily interested in cultural heritage. The experiments detailed in the following lines show successful and collaborative strategies to teaching science to both nonscientific and scientific audiences. Our set of activities can be easily adapted to audiences spanning from college-level general chemistry to art conservation students. The latter will use similarly tailored projects to address unique conservation-related questions throughout their careers. As such questions are often related to the original state of the material, synthesis and evaluation of those materials can and will likely affect treatment, housing, and display decisions. Additionally, the role of these materials on “problem-substrates”, or substrates such as paper and paint that react and degrade with the material, contributes to these decisions. The materials in question can also be used to illustrate simpler subject matter to younger chemistry students. Integrating artists’ materials as a part of a general chemistry lab connects lessons to real world situations. Therefore, this project presents a format that can grow and expand from fundamental high school chemistry, to under- graduate science courses, to conservation-related research projects. Copper-Containing Artists’ Materials Copper reactivity offers seemingly endless opportunities to teach chemistry. Besides their high reactivity, copper compounds are ideal candidates for teaching several science topics due to both their relatively low cost and toxicity. Copper compounds provide a wide range of colors, from various shades of blue to red, depending on their chemical state (oxidation states, crystal structures, ligands, etc.). 13-18 Numerous historic pigments are copper-based, and artists’ treatises contain guidelines for their preparation and use (supported by modern analytical investigation), e.g., blue Received: June 5, 2018 Revised: October 18, 2018 Laboratory Experiment pubs.acs.org/jchemeduc Cite This: J. Chem. Educ. XXXX, XXX, XXX-XXX © XXXX American Chemical Society and Division of Chemical Education, Inc. A DOI: 10.1021/acs.jchemed.8b00358 J. Chem. Educ. XXXX, XXX, XXX-XXX J. Chem. Educ. Downloaded from pubs.acs.org by UNIV OF WINNIPEG on 11/29/18. For personal use only.