Had a meeting the other day with the newly formed Outreach Working Group.

I got involved in an interesting debate over the merits of various forms of demonstration. I'm personally a big fan of the flash-bang shows. It's how I was attracted to chemistry in the first place, and it certainly has impact. I am concerned, however, that opportunities to learn and practice this craft are becoming harder to find, as health and safety legislation tightens.

The counter-point to this argument is that there are many low risk demonstrations that can be done that are deeply provocative and profound. Instead of promoting chemistry as a dangerous, explosive science, should we not instead focus on its deep, profound impact on the modern world and all that is around us?

It's a compelling point, but I remain unconvinced. Yes, we need to inspire and attract the "deep thinkers" to our science. But we also need to attract the "have a go heroes" who rush in where angels fear to tread. Without a balance of both, the chemists of tomorrow will suffer. And it is more time consuming and harder to acquire the skills and experience to conduct a good flash-bang show safely, then it is to perform low-risk demonstrations. As such, the danger remains that the high-risk experiments will slowly be lost to would be chemists of the future.