Chemical and Physical Methods for the Cultural Goods Conservation

By the end of the course, the student will be able to:
1. describe the fundamental physical-chemical mechanisms at the base of the
· principal modern scientific investigation methods (spectroscopy, microscopy, imaging) employed to evaluate the conservation state and the criteria to restore cultural heritage items.
· alteration and weathering as well as the stability of materials for the fabrication of cultural heritage artifacts belonging to the most employed classes of substances (lithics, ceramics, metals, wood, and organic)
2. Identify, through an assessment based on the nature of cultural heritage items, and on the allowed invasivity (destructive or not-destructive investigation), the most suitable analysis techniques to:
· evaluate the conservation state of cultural heritage items;
· study the morphological and structural properties of the materials constituting the items.
3. Discuss the practical application of the diagnostic techniques, and the degradation mechanisms, from the physical chemistry point of view in case studies autonomously identified by the student from the international recent scientific literature.

The student becomes familiar with physical properties used as parameters to evaluate the conservation and/or establish the restoration criteria of art crafts, with particular emphasis to thermodynamics, kinetics, rheology, spectroscopy, various kinds of microscopy and image analysis.