Art can be made of almost anything, including substances
1.
______. that have not been produced and used in ages, and it
comes in all shapes and sizes.
More importantly, scientists have to study art
without affecting it,
2. ______.
and that usually means limited, destructive tests.
3.
______. If they have to take a sample, it must be as small as
possible.
In the objects conservation lab, the big samples look as the period at the
end of this sentence. 4. ______. Small samples are
microscopic. The scientists have developed
creative ways to deal the
constraints. Consider the case of the fish pendant.
5. ______.
Gold with multicolored enamel, it was originally thought to date in the
16th century. 6.
______. And curators and conservators saw that the style was all
wrong for that period.
7. ______. It was either mislabeled or a
pretence. Mark Wypyski, a glass specialist who runs
8. ______. the scanning
electron microscope at the museum, took a tiny porcelainlike sample
from a green part of the pendant and bombarded it with
electrons, causing it
to emit X-rays
characteristic of the elements in it. Mr. Wypyski interpreted
the results as they popped on a computer monitor.
9. ______. There was chromium, which was not
used in glass or enamels since the 19th century.
10. ______.