SCIENCE AND ART: AN INTEGRATED EDUCATIONAL PATH ON COLOUR VISION

Integrating Arts into Science (STEAM) is becoming a central issue in modern education. STEAM education based on inquiry, curiosity, perception and emotions allows guiding students to find solutions to a problem and to being creative in the finding of solutions. Colour vision is an intrinsically interdisciplinary subject connecting Physics, Material Science and Natural Sciences to Art and to Perception and Emotions that can be addressed from multiple perspectives. In this work, we describe a pilot project for an integrated educational path on colour vision in which the Beauty of Art is the bridge between perception and emotions on one hand and fundamental physical concepts on the other hand. History of Art is the way for introducing the topic of colour symbolism and showing the historical evolution of colour synthesis theories. The need to understand the beauty of colours in terms of the properties of light opens the way to teach fundamental physical concepts related to light and to radiation-matter interaction and to introduce more recent applications of optical techniques to noninvasive analysis of artworks. The proposed teaching sequence includes inquiry-based seminars and laboratory activities on geometrical optics, imaging and spectrometry.