MayraZDesma9: Event 1: Natural History Museum

After reading about the two cultures I set out to find this example at the Natural History Museum. I then remembered that they have a huge collection of gems and minerals. I thought this would be relevant because gems and minerals are used in our everyday lives including the sciences and arts.

Minerals are used in everyday household items, medical tools, technological devices, and even art supplies. Tungsten is used in light bulbs and pens; which are used every day. What I want to say about this experience and trip to the museum was that I found a lot of minerals and gems that were used in technology and in art. There are different forms and uses for them.

The first thing I want to talk about is art; it has many shapes and forms, and uses a large number of materials. Graphite is soft, easily powdered, and opaque. And many artists use this mineral to draw/sketch and it is an essential tool. For photographers the film they use is coated in different salts, silver and other silver bearing minerals. A main material that I use in my art is ceramic; clay is a form of dirt that is easily shaped when wet and it is strong and rigid when fired. When glazing there is a large amount of minerals in the glazes that serve as a coloring/decorative purposes but it also creates a waterproof piece. Glaze can contain silica, sodium, potassium, calcium, flux, alumina, iron oxide, copper carbonate, cobalt carbonate and many more minerals.

Here are some examples of the possibilities you can get when glazing.

Minerals are also used in technological devices such as electrical machinery, fluorescent lamps in x-ray tubes, cell phones, computers, medical devices such as mri scanners and cat scan devices. The possibilities are endless with minerals.

Some minerals are cut to reveal what is on the inside. They are cut using special machines depending on the hardness of the material.

I was amazed as to what you can make out of these minerals. Here is a box made out of malachite and sugilite.

The second section of the exhibition is gems. I always thought that gems were just pretty rocks that can be looked at or worn as jewels. This is true but gems are also used in painting pigments. During the Medieval times gem and mineral pigments were used in paintings; they were very expensive. A color that is recognizable in manuscripts is the component azurite and ultramarine.Let's not forget gold, gold was an essential material in books for decoration purposes. I also found out that pigments were used as make up in the Egyptian times.

Here are different gems and minerals with different hardness and softness which make different marks. Each mark has a distinct pigment and texture depending on the material.

I was astonished at the intense and intricate designs you could make.

It takes great patience and skill to cut a gem and to make it look like a piece of jewelry. Here we see some before and after of stones that are now beautiful pieces of jewelry.

After going to see all these gems and minerals and find out about their uses I can say that they play a big role in the tools for science and art and without them we would not have many things. As I was leaving the museum I saw a very pretty wall made out of simple rocks and how useful it was. I now think of all the things I use and what was used to make it and how much work was put into it.