The following is a guest post by David Kim, summer 2024 American Chemical Society SEED intern in the Preservation Research and Testing Division (PRTD).
A little about you:
My name is David Kim, and I am a senior at Fairfax High School. I grew up in South Korea and moved to the U.S. in 2019. In my free time, I like to play soccer with my friends and sing karaoke. I would like to major in biomedical engineering in college. I want to use the power of science to help other people!
A little about your project:
The Library of Congress has a number of rare surviving Mesoamerican codices from the pre-Columbian and Spanish colonial periods. These codices used organic colorants that are hard to identify because of the low concentration of dye, their fast degradation processes, and most challenging of all, very similar chemical structures among the different yellows. A team from Mexico recently reported that they could identify the traditional yellow organic colorants of the region using a sequence of five non-invasive methods. However, their reference sample set was fairly small, and we wanted to check if their methods held up with our much larger set of samples. During this summer, we collected data for four of the five steps of the proposed model: visible light imaging, ultraviolet light imaging, false-color UV imaging, and reflectance spectroscopy, each of which contributes information to characterize and distinguish these yellow colorants. The resulting flowchart we created is different from the original one proposed, but it was still promising – we were able to distinguish between many of the yellow plant dyes using these four techniques.
What surprised you most about this summer?
When I heard that I would be conducting chemical research at the Library of Congress, I was honestly pretty shocked. I was even more surprised when I met all the amazing scientists, and saw the dry and wet labs filled with sophisticated scientific instruments.
What was the most challenging part of the summer, and how did you get through that?
The most challenging part of the summer was working with so many samples – over 200 yellow colorant patches. Because I had to analyze all the samples using four different instrumental methods and compare all the data, it was pretty overwhelming. However, I persevered, understanding that analyzing these samples gave me an opportunity to master all of the instrumental techniques that would be extremely valuable in the future.
What turned out to be your favorite part of the project?
My favorite, but also scary, part of the project was not knowing whether our analytical approach would work, or not. Our hypothesis was that we would be able to come up with a good flowchart for distinguishing between the yellow colorants. But if the results said otherwise, all the work I put in might not lead to a useful tool. However, this was also my favorite part. That thrill, that hope that my hypothesis would be true, overpowered these worries. So, I was excited and motivated this whole summer.
Outside of our working hours, I also enjoyed spending time in the Main Reading Room. Its fancy, historical vibe helped me write my college application essays.
One thing from this summer that you think will help you in the future:
Mastering scientific instruments like Fiber-Optic Reflectance Spectroscopy (FORS), Fourier-Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR), imaging, and colorimetry will help me greatly in the future, because in college, I will continue to utilize these instruments, and the skills I gained this summer will shine. This was also my first experience with writing a report on a large, complex project like this.
I want to say thank you to everyone in PRTD for always being there for me. They helped me master the instruments, saved me when I was lost in the building, and gave me helpful advice for my future. I also want to express my special gratitude to my mentor, Cindy Connelly Ryan. With every small step I took this summer, she was next to me, guiding and supporting me.
I won’t forget PRTD, and I will keep you all updated on my future endeavors!
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