Friday, July 15, 2016
Meet the Chemist Who Accidentally Created a New Blue Pigment
The Creators Project: Synthetic shades of blue have been sought after since Antiquity, with varying successes along the way. Now the world’s newest blue pigment, YInMn (so called because it’s made up of Yttrium, Indium and Manganese) was cooked up by accident by a team of chemists led by Mas Subramanian at Oregon State University in 2009. They were conducting experiments to study the electronic properties of manganese oxide, but what they got instead is a whole new pigment.
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I think that color, and finding new ones is really cool. It is similar to when people said that they found the darkest shade of black in 2014. Color is such an interesting element in the way that color affects the human brain. I am sure that of course they are doing continuous test to make sure that it is even a new color and the color can be replicated, but I am wondering just how many more new colors we have still yet to discover. I personally have trouble telling colors apart sometimes. Unless there is a large difference, all my blues are blues and all my reds are red and so on. When looking at the new color in the article, I truly didn’t see a difference from any other blue that there is out there. Yet I am curious to see what other color get discovered within my lifetime.
It's such a coincidence that the new color is discovered in a chemistry "accident", and it's value is first discovered by a scientist, not an artist. This story just perfectly illustrates how science and art are related. Just as in ancient time pigments were made by alchemists, now the same astonishing discovery is still happening, while people generally tend to separate science and art into two unrelated spheres. This is not a wise thing to do. It's the same on theatre stage, as scenery is full of science, and the making of trees, flying people, scenic painting and rigging system can be science-oriented. One thing the article points out about the advantage of this kind of blue pigment is that it has perfect duration and safety, while Cobalt blue can be carcinogenic, and Prussian blue can release cyanide. This is definitely an aspect that should be taken into consideration for painters who work in art studio, theatre, architecture, or furniture decoration. This discovery of new blue might change more things than we thought today.
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