Sophisticated portable instrumentation enables imaging and spectroscopic measurements in undergraduate laboratories and in off-site venues ranging from community colleges, universities, and museums. For instance, portable x-ray fluorescence spectrometers, fiber optic reflectance spectrometers, multi and hyperspectral imaging systems, and infrared cameras can all be packed in suitcases and transported via “planes, trains, and automobiles” to any location. At Washington and Lee University (W&L), we have incorporated this instrumentation in three different chemistry classes, a geology class, and an art history class. This instrumentation is also demonstrated in numerous courses. The portability of the instrumentation has enabled the equipment to be used in lecture demonstrations and in research at over twenty different higher education institutions and at roughly twenty different museums in the US and Europe. The talk will briefly describe the undergraduate laboratory classroom functions of the equipment and will elaborate more fully on recent research discoveries made with undergraduate researchers using the instrumentation on university and museum collections of cultural heritage objects. From fifteen research publications from the W&L group in this area during the past five years, the emphasis will be on the most recent results, highlighting collaborations between W&L and The Huntington; W&L and the Chrysler Museum of Art and the Rijksmuseum; W&L and the North Carolina Museum of Art; and W&L and the Georgia Museum of Art. Training the authors have received via the National Gallery of Art (Washington, DC), the Indianapolis Museum of Art, and NU-ACCESS (Northwestern University/art Institute of Chicago) and other institutions allows W&L to be a force multiplier in the educational outreach and research missions of those institutions, and that aspect of collaborative work will also be discussed.<br/>

Imaging methodologies and standoff  spectroscopy: Utilizing portable instrumentation across a range of undergraduate courses and in museum and university research domestically and abroad

254th National Meeting (2017)

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