Cobalt Green: Art Meets Science
An old pigment called Cobalt Green is magnetically special
Aug 18, 2006
Sometimes there is a fine line between art and science. In the field of science, the thought process of the scientist begins with a hypothesis. And just what is a hypothesis? It is an educated guess. And to be able to make an educated guess about something like matter, energy, gravity, particles, scientists must have a knowledge of what has come before and be able to imagine what could be. This is exactly what artists do as well--they absorb what artists have done previously and they imagine what could be.
Artists have experimented for years with various materials in an attempt to create pleasing and lasting pigments for painting. When the pyramids of Egypt were opened in the 1800s and 1900s a painting pigment was created called Mummy Brown that was made from the crushed bones of mummies. Other artists experimented with the urine of various animals such as cows and camels to create yellow pigments. In this way, artists have been scientists since they began looking for colors to paint with.
Cobalt Green is a pigment first invented by Sven Rinmann a Swedish Chemist in 1780. Recently researchers at the University of Washington discovered that this centuries-old pigment used for painting has special magnetic properties that could lead to a break through in the field of spintronics.
Spintronic instruments are used in the area of computer storage and memory. Before the Cobalt Green discovery, spintronic devices only functioned at a chilly 200 degrees below zero Celsius or minus 328 Farenheit.
The future of spintronic devices, when they are finally harnessed to be used at room temperatures, is that computers would work at unheard of speeds. The goal, say scientists, is to be able to start your computer and have your operating system and software load immediately as in the turning on of a light switch. The other possible implication is that the new spintronic technology would require very little energy.
Cobalt Green is a pigment that never became a standard in the average artists palette because it was very expensive and its tinting power was considered weak. It is good that the scientists at the University of Washington have reconsidered this centuries-old pigment and discovered perhaps its true power lies in storage and energy, not in creating paintings.
