Bhanoo, Sindya N. "On Canvas, Clues About Air Pollution." The New York Times. The New York Times, 31 Mar. 2014. Web. 02 Apr. 2014.
Have you ever looked at a sunset? Have you ever considered if the colors were brighter than several years ago? Sunset paintings by some of the greatest artists are now cluing scientists into information that might not have been imagined before. In the article, "On Canvas, Clues About Air Pollution" by Sindya N. Bhanoo, scientists such as Andreas Kazantzidis, an atmospheric physicist at Greece's University of Patras, are involved in the research that these sunset paintings are giving significant clues about air pollution. According to Dr. Kazantzidis, "polluted skies result in redder sunsets" and since these artists usually paint what they see, the brighter color was brought to the canvas. This was evident when a volcano erupted in Indonesia in 1815. Afterward, when the ash and gasses from the volcano were released into the atmosphere, the sunsets were of bright red and orange. The paintings from about two years before in this area were not as red. This research was done by analyzing photographs of paintings between the time periods of 1500 to 2000. By examining these paintings and looking at the "red-to-green ratio along the horizon of each sunset", Dr. Kazantzidis and his team were able to make an approximation of how much aerosols was in the atmosphere at the date of each painting. In turn, the amount of air pollution during that time can be estimated.
This information affects humanity in general due to that air pollution is a constant issue nowadays. With these clues, scientists can predict what the pollution status, if any, was before the 1850's since meteorological measurements did not exist until then. They may be able to find a solution to this problem or at least find a way to delay atmospheric pollution from making a greater impact on the earth.
This article was definitely interesting because I would never have thought that paintings of sunsets would give clues about air pollution. Overall, the article was informative and easy to follow. However, it was on the short side, and I did want to know more about the topic, but this field of research is relatively new, so the length is understandable. I would recommend this article to anyone who enjoys science and/or art or is curious about the topic.
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I think Sara did a great job with this Current Event Write Up. To begin, one thing that I think she did particularly well was bring the reader in with her first few sentences. After reading these, I immediately wanted to continue reading the write up. In addition, she gave a good summary of the article in which she included specific examples from the article to back up her statements. Finally, she did a great job incorporating quotes by scientists from the article, using them to make her write up better.
ReplyDeleteThough she did a great job with this current event, there were a few small things that could have been improved. First, she could have made her sentences shorter in length. For example, in the last paragraph, one of the sentences has a lot of commas and is very long, so it was hard to read. Also, she could make the sentences transition into one another better.
One thing I learned from this article is how much we can learn from paintings. I was amazed when I read that scientists could see air pollution levels from paintings that were hundreds of years old. Overall, I think Sara did a great job writing this article.
Sara did a great job with her article review. I liked Sara started with a question to draw the reader's attention. Adding quotes from the article was another thing that I really liked about her review. Lastly, Sara gave a great summary of the article and her thoughts about it.
ReplyDeleteI felt some of the transitions from one idea to another were a bit choppy like Michael mentioned. One more thing that could have been improved by making the sentences shorter to keep the reader's attention.
Before reading Sara's review, I was not aware of the things people could find out from looking at paintings. I enjoyed reading Sara's review.