Ouachita Baptist University (OBU) is a private liberal arts institution with approximately 1500 students. In 2014, OBU revamped its CORE curriculum. This change included replacing the previous sequence of Physical Science and Life Science courses (each 3 hours lecture, 2 hours lab) with Scientific Inquiry (3 hours lecture, 2 hours lab) and Scientific Connections (3 hours lecture). Scientific Inquiry is designed to help non-science majors learn to ask questions, evaluate data, and reach their own conclusions about real-world issues in science. Scientific Connections allows students to take what they learned from Inquiry and apply it to an interdisciplinary topic of interest to the instructor (and hopefully also to the students). One of the courses introduced for Scientific Connections in the Spring of 2015 was Chemistry of Art, affectionately dubbed “How to Get Away with Forgery.”<br/>The semester begins with a case study on the analysis of fakes and forgeries. This captures the students’ imagination and interest quickly, having seen several movies and TV shows related to this subject. While working through the case study, the students develop a list of topics that need to be explored further. This sets the tone for the course, leading to a student-driven curriculum. Through the semester, topics such as light, matter, and the nature of materials are addressed. Hands-on activities are included to help make real-world connections to these concepts. In addition to the science, we explore real-life forgers and how they were able to succeed in their craft. The semester culminates with a group project in which groups of students present a forgery plan to the rest of the class, which includes what they are going to forge and why, how they plan to accomplish the task, and what the possible pitfalls are.

Connecting chemistry and art in the liberal arts classroom

254th National Meeting (2017)

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