Tag: Science

  • Lacquer as Art and Medicinal Material in Early Modern England

    Lacquer as Art and Medicinal Material in Early Modern England

    CHENG HE Look up the word ‘lacquer’ in an art dictionary, or on Google, and you usually find the word ‘varnish’; a sticky liquid applied to the surface of objects to form a shiny coating. The word can also refer to the objects coated with varnish themselves, which are sometimes decorated with additional materials like…

  • Lucy Jane Santos’ ‘Half Lives: The Unlikely History of Radium’

    Lucy Jane Santos’ ‘Half Lives: The Unlikely History of Radium’

    Lucy Jane Santos In the late 19th century that Wilhelm Röntgen discovered a previously unknown form of powerful radiation that was invisible to the human eye. This type of ray, which no one (including Röntgen) fully understood at the time, was so mysterious that he simply named it ‘X’. In 1896, working from Röntgen’s findings,…