Colorful and Creative Chemistry: Making Simple Sustainable Paints with Natural Pigments and Binders

This activity presents a simple method for producing sustainable, nontoxic, and environmentally friendly paints from materials purchased at a local grocery store and offers suggestions for experiments to test the properties of the student-made paints. This activity has been used to engage elementary, middle, and high school students in scientific outreach efforts aimed at teaching chemical concepts in a creative way, inspiring the next generation of scientists and educators to use the tools of chemistry toward the development of a sustainable future. In addition to highlighting the important concepts of sustainability and green chemistry throughout the science curriculum, this activity inspires creative thought and uses observational exercises that are essential to the scientific method. Extracting pigments from natural sources teaches students important laboratory techniques while emphasizing chemical concepts, such as polarity and “like dissolves like”. Students begin to see chemistry everywhere and realize that chemistry can be applied to make useful products in a sustainable way. Also discussed is a cutting edge, collaborative experiment for paint analysis through remote access to a scanning electron microscope, which gives students in any classroom hands-on experience with advanced analytical equipment via the Internet. In a wide range of educational settings, students have used their synthesized paints to craft beautiful artwork depicting what chemistry and sustainability now means to them.

Full article citation: Blatti, J. L. (2017). Colorful and Creative Chemistry: Making Simple Sustainable Paints with Natural Pigments and Binders. Journal of Chemical Education, 94(2), 211–215. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jchemed.6b00591