Art can be made of almost anything, including substances 1. ______.
that have not been produced and used in ages, and it comes in all shapes and sizes.
More importantly, scientists have to study art without affecting it, 2. ______.
and that usually means limited, destructive tests. 3. ______.
If they have to take a sample, it must be as small as possible.
In the objects conservation lab, the big samples look as the period at the end of this sentence. 4. ______.
Small samples are microscopic. The scientists have developed
creative ways to deal the constraints. Consider the case of the fish pendant. 5. ______.
Gold with multicolored enamel, it was originally thought to date in the 16th century. 6. ______.
And curators and conservators saw that the style was all wrong for that period. 7. ______.
It was either mislabeled or a pretence. Mark Wypyski, a glass specialist who runs 8. ______.
the scanning electron microscope at the museum, took a tiny porcelainlike sample
from a green part of the pendant and bombarded it with electrons, causing it
to emit X-rays characteristic of the elements in it. Mr. Wypyski interpreted
the results as they popped on a computer monitor. 9. ______.
There was chromium, which was not used in glass or enamels since the 19th century. 10. ______.