Where Science Meets Art
Looking for bridges between subjects is something Huntington High School teachers do all the time. Such interdisciplinary activities bring new meaning to a student’s daily educational life and inject an element of interest and excitement into classroom lessons.
Art teacher Kasmira Mohanty recently discussed a project she collaborated on with science teacher Dame Forbes. The science students created marbled paper during a lab assignment. The images were then scanned. Ms. Mohanty computer graphics class took the original pieces and created kaleidoscopic artworks.
“The art of paper marbling involves using carbon based inks which are blown across water creating decorative patterns which mimic those of a piece of marble stone,” Ms. Mohanty said. “The design is then carefully lifted unto rice paper. This is traditionally a Japanese art form called sumi nagashi or “ink-floating.” In this laboratory activity, the students mimicked this beautiful, yet simple, art form using shaving cream and food coloring.
Mrs. Forbes explained that “shaving cream is primarily a soap classified as a lather. The soap, triethanolammonium stearate, has a hydrophilic head composed of a carboxylate ion and triethaneammonium ion, and a hydrophobic tail made of a 17-carbon-long aliphatic chain from stearic acid. When a water drop is added to the surface of shaving cream tinted with food color, the color instantaneously disappears in the lather at the point of contact.”
This project was truly a case of science meeting art. “The water-based food color is attracted to the hydrophilic head of the soap and repelled by the hydrophobic tail,” Mrs. Forbes said. “These factors combine to limit the motion or spreading of the food color. Paper contains cellulose, which is a polymer of glucose, as well as other chemical substances. The soap immobilizes the food color and the design is captured on the paper.”
The science students saw the soap in the shaving cream dissolve in the drop of water that fell on the tinted shaving cream. “The surface tension of the added water drop is lowered, and the drop of water spreads, thus creating the patterns,” Mrs. Forbes said.
It’s an activity with plenty of implications for learning and one that really made students think. Huntington’s art program is full of such surprises.
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