Beyond the Bunsen burner: the art of chemistry

The art-science exhibition reveals lamps and analytical equipment dating back to the 1800s. Visitors can explore the history of the instruments and the stories of the people who used them, including Antarctic explorers.

Dr Renee Beale from the School of Chemistry curated the exhibition working with artist Peter Sharp, chemistry Professor Ken Ghiggino and research assistant Jack Norton.

“Some of the pieces in the collection were actually handmade by University of Melbourne’s first Professor of Chemistry and Metallurgy, John Drummond Kirkland in 1865,” Dr Beale says.

“Professor Kirkland struggled to purchase equipment for his students and so bought much from his own personal funds or constructed equipment himself including a lamp using an old panning sieve.”

Apart from providing safe illumination for work in the laboratory, these lamps would have also been used as a teaching tool to test for particular gases. Flammable gas mixtures cause flame to burn higher or with a different colour tinge depending on composition.

“One of the most striking pieces that artist Peter Sharp has produced for the exhibition is of a prism emitting light,” Dr Beale says.

“The ability of a prism to generate a rainbow of colours has been harnessed in the scientific study of spectrometry since Isaac Newton coined the term ‘spectrum’ in 1666 to describe the rainbow of colours which combine to form white light.”

Since that time chemists discovered the link between the unique light spectras generated by particular chemical elements.

In 1860, Kirchoff and Bunsen developed the first spectroscope, enabling chemists to identify elements of unknown samples and discover new elements such as caesium and rubidium.

chemistry.unimelb.edu.au