Suggested Curriculum for The Chemistry of Art

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Computational chemistry is a powerful tool for introducing, exploring, and applying concepts encountered throughout the chemistry curriculum.  At the same time there has been a recent emergence of significant interest among educators and students for courses and curricula focused on explaining the fundamentals of art and color from the perspective of chemistry.  Here we introduce a set of 10 lessons, which we call the "The Chemistry of Art," that are designed to leverage computational chemistry for a unique educational experience in discovering the significant role of chemistry in art.  The set of lessons are designed to be used in a variety of courses from dedicated courses on the chemistry of art to traditional courses in the undergraduate curriculum such as general chemistry or physical chemistry.  The lessons allow  students and/or instructors to interact with selected topics using the QuantumChemistry package exclusively within Maple without any need to collate multiple software packages!  Questions in each lesson are labeled by letters for easy reference.   Each lesson can be used 'as-is' or modified as desired to be used by students in a classroom setting, laboratory setting, or as an out of class guided inquiry assignment.

While lessons can be experienced in a variety of orders, the following suggestion corresponds to a natural ordering of topics that builds from first principles towards a deeper understanding.  

1. Electromagnetic Spectrum

This lesson introduces the electromagnetic spectrum including the relationship between the wavelength and frequency of light.

2. Photons and Energy

This lesson connects the wave interpretation of light in Lesson 1 to the interpretation of light as a collection of particles, known as photons.

3. Perception of Color

This lesson relates the properties of light such as its wave length and frequency to the perception of color.

4. Color Spaces

This lesson quantifies the perception of color through the introduction of color spaces.

5. Color Vision Deficiency

This lesson provides a scientific exploration of color vision deficiency (CVD) through the use of color spaces.

6. Color & Absorption

This lesson explains the relationship between the frequency of light absorbed by an object and its color.

7. Absorption Spectra

This lesson introduces the absoption spectrum of a molecule including the Beer-Lambert Law.
 

8. Absorption & Quantization

This lesson provides a microscopic explanation for absorption and color of molecules through the principles of quantum mechanics.

9. Pigments & Dyes

This lesson explores the origin of colors in pigments and dyes through a quantum particle-in-a-box model for conjugated molecules.

10. Quantum Chemistry of Dyes

This lesson employs advanced computational chemistry methods to explain the difference in color of indigo and tyrian purple dyes.