New exhibition at D-CHAB: The Art of Chemistry
Have you ever wondered what lies under your skin? How can you examine thousands of cells? What does a catalyst look like, and can aerosols be made visible? “The Art of Chemistry” exhibition – visitable at ETH’s Hönggerberg campus (HCI / H-floor) and online, curated by Julia Ecker and Oliver Renn (PR D-CHAB) – approaches science in a different way. 13 large pictures provide insights into the D-CHAB’s research and illustrate that chemistry is not only exciting, but beautiful – even truly artistic.
Researchers in chemistry sometimes see themselves as molecular craftsmen: learning their craft, mastering it, creating new things, extending existing things, finding solutions, and being excited by chemistry's potential to change the world in a positive way. Good motivations. But apart from that, they also find the world of molecules simply beautiful: be it the bright colors and aesthetic shapes of inorganic compounds, the impressive molecular architectures in organics, or elegantly designed molecular binding pockets. However, this beauty is usually only seen by those who search through interdisciplinary publications or have the necessary tools and laboratory access.
The public sometimes lacks access to such images or impressions, which may contribute to the idea that chemistry is associated more with abstraction and complexity and less with aesthetics. Images can make the molecular world tangible, arouse fascination, and demonstrate how multifaceted scientific practice, chemistry and its applications can be. This is exciting not only for people outside the field but also for researchers in chemistry who cannot keep track of all aspects of the field. Therefore, Public Relations D-CHAB has taken this year's International Chemistry Olympiad as an opportunity to launch a small exhibition, which could also be sent on tour one day.
"The Art of Chemistry" comprises 13 large-format pictures taken from research at D-CHAB, each supplemented by a short text. One of the images, for instance, provides insights into crystallography and the work of the Small Molecule Crystallography Center. It shows a microscopic image of a thin crystalline layer of orthocetamol, grown rapidly by melting and promptly solidifying. Who would have thought that even dull, colorless compounds like orthocetamol could glow in all the colors of the rainbow?
The inner body of a photopolymerization reactor is not less astonishing – viewed from this special perspective, it looks like a machine from a science fiction movie. In reality, however, it enables the chemical assembly of short monomer molecules into long polymer chains. Debora Thöny (Grützmacher Group) was honored with a special mention for this image in the Scientific Image Competition of the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF).
Another exciting field is aerosol research. The image shows how laser light is scattered by an aerosol sample. A two-dimensional pattern is created, which contains information about the size and charge distribution of the aerosol particles – important details needed, for example, to study photochemical reactions, which in turn can affect atmospheric chemistry.
These are just a few examples of what you can discover about current research at D-CHAB on the walls of the H-floor foyer (HCI building, ETHZ Hönggerberg), while the display cases in the center of the foyer show the roots of chemistry and pharmacy at ETH Zurich. For those who cannot visit the exhibition live or simply would like to have more information about the images, there is also a online version of the exhibition, developed and designed by Maria Pechlaner.
