Encounters with Books & A Hunt for Blue

We start with some very old books — a late medieval breviary, an Ethiopic manuscript in tied wood boards, a Persian Qur’ān. There are hesitations, soft murmurs, animated conversations. What do you see, we ask. How does it feel? What is it made of?

Then it was time for a detective game: Anikó and Richard had set up an exercise where students had to determine which what blue pigment was on their “object” by analyzing it with FORS (Fiber Optics Reflectance Spectroscopy), LIBS (Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy), and Infra-red Photography.