Science on Saturdays: Art, Forsenics, and Exploration

For the past 10 years, the Science on Saturdays program has given community members insight into the life of Yale faculty and undergraduates.  On six Saturdays every academic year, Pathways students and their parents gather on the second floor of Sterling Chemistry Lab for the event. For the first hour, Yale undergraduate and graduate students give hands-on demonstrations on a variety of scientific principles. The crowd then flows into a lecture hall for an hour-long presentation by one of Yale’s many renowned faculty.  Science on Saturdays is a joint venture presented by the Yale Scientific Magazine (YSM) and hosted by Kurt Zilm, professor of chemistry and chemical engineering. It is organized by Yale Synapse, YSM’s outreach group, and Yale Pathways to Science. 
Previous presentations have spanned topics from “Why Birds Are Dinosaurs” to “The Universe in Your Hands.”  The event highlighted in this article featured Stefan Simon, Director of the Yale Institute for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage, who presented a lecture on how forensic analysis is used to identify art fraud. As an expert conservation specialist, he explained how he uses technology and chemistry to examine pieces of art and to pinpoint fakes.  This lecture was followed by two demonstrations outside of the lecture hall, respectively about the separation of components of a pigment, known as chromatography and use of camera filters to see the preliminary carbon sketches of old paintings.
Check out previous Science on Saturdays presentations: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLqHnHG5X2PXDRLWmBxd_n5lleuom02Glp