Archive | materials science

Conservators challenged by contemporary artworks at the Hirshhorn Museum

Conservators challenged by contemporary artworks at the Hirshhorn Museum

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Digital Stradivari: computer models of violins reveal master luthier’s techniques

Digital Stradivari: computer models of violins reveal master luthier’s techniques

In a pilot study that used seven Stradivari violins made between 1670 and 1709, the researchers scanned each violin with a CT scanner then used the data to create digital, 3-D images of each violin. [...more]

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Problem plastics in museum collections have conservators on alert

Problem plastics in museum collections have conservators on alert

While society at large frets about plastics that pile up and seem to last forever— grocery bags clogging landfills and soda bottles washing up on beaches—museums worry about the thousands upon thousands of artifacts in their collections made of plastic, objects that in many cases are crumbling and cracking and sometimes damaging other artifacts as they break [...] [...more]

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Meet our Scientists—Videos!

Caught on camera!

This short video of an ocelot was taken by Smithsonian scientists during a recent camera-trap survey of these animals in the Peruvian Amazon. [...more]

(Courtesy of Joseph Kolowski)

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