As Regional Coordinator for Scotland, I’m often out and about at various events, promoting the various educational activities that the RSC offers. However, last month I visited Bang LIVE! - the BBC Bang Goes the Theory roadshow - which reminded me of my former job at the BBC.
 
Before joining the RSC I worked as a researcher in the Specialist Factual department of BBC Scotland. The department makes a huge variety of programmes, from short science films for the One Show on BBC1, to Afterlife: the Science of Decay (BBC4). The last programme I worked on, How It Works: Ceramics, was broadcast on BBC4 recently. It was part of a series on materials science presented by Prof. Mark Miodownik.
 
Mark is really enthusiastic about communicating his science and I think that enthusiasm came across on camera, particularly when we were doing some sort of demonstration. As a researcher you often have to come up with demos or test things before trying them on camera, as well as finding out the facts and the stories. This is part of the reason that most of the researchers in my department had science degrees or PhDs. Often scientists I spoke to were surprised to find out that I studied chemistry and had a PhD in the synthesis of new antioxidants!
 
How It Works got great feedback and generated a lot of positive comments on Twitter. I’ve heard of teachers using science TV programmes as part of their teaching and think it’s a great way to showcase interesting, visual science presented by someone engaging. Obviously I’m a bit biased, but we put a lot of information into How It Works that I can see being used in the classroom.
 
Do you think science programmes are a good way of getting people interested in science? Have any teachers reading this ever thought of using TV programmes in the classroom? I would love to hear your thoughts.
 
Linsey

Linsey Robertson is RSC Regional Coordinator for Scotland and works with the education team. Contact her on linsey.robertson@ed.ac.uk

The RSC has just hosted a visit by Jim Paice, MP for South East Cambridgeshire and Minister of State for Agriculture and Food. He has met with our colleagues in the Science Team to discuss the importance of agricultural science and how the UK can be a leader in soil science.

When he came to speak to the Education Team, we gave him a whistle stop tour of Learn Chemistry and in particular to our Faces of Chemistry: Crop Protection videos and the newly launched Challenging Plants resources. He admired the website and the resources and agreed that they would raise awareness of the application of the science involved in optimising crops growth, as well as lawns at home!

These resources are all part of the RSC roadmap to show the importance of how chemistry touches every aspect of your life!

We've just launched brand new Faces of Chemistry videos in collaboration with Queen Mary, University of London sponsored by ESPRIT.

The videos investigate the role of two chemists, Dr Anna Spehar-Deleze and Dr Salzitsa Anastasova-Ivanova, who work in the material science laboratory at QMUL. They develop and use biosensors to help athletes improve their performance.

The videos give you exclusive, behind the scenes access to the sport performance research which is carried out in their lab. It was great to see how cutting-edge chemistry research translates into real-life applications in the sporting world.  London 2012 is just around the corner and these videos explore the importance of chemistry in sports performance.

In one day we got to film the development of a biochemical profile of an athlete from the information collected from the biosensors. The sensors were inserted into tissue and measured analytes in sweat and blood before, during and after exercise. The information provided can help construct individualised training programmes and even recovery strategies when an athlete is injured.

It will be no coincidence this summer that new records and personal bests will be broken at the London 2012 Olympic Games in no small part to the work done by Anna and Salzitsa.

Check out the new Faces of Chemistry - Biosensor videos. 

We've just launched a new set of physical chemistry resources - Challenging Plants - created with the support of Reckitt Benckiser.

With nearly a hundred videos, worksheets, handouts, presentations, and experiments, Challenging Plants is a great resource for gifted and talented students and any students exploring the chemistry of plant life.

Questions are today being raised about A-levels not equipping students with appropriate maths skills. Unsurprisingly, this extends across the sciences - chemistry, physics and biology, but also to business studies, computing, economics, geography, psychology and sociology. For example, It was found the amount of maths based questions were as low as 0-2% across all biology awarding organisations. Also, some maths concepts were included in science exams which did not follow logically on from GCSE maths.

The report from SCORE (Science Community Representing Education) also noted a disparity across exam boards of the proportion of the assessments that required the use of maths.  A significant amount of the maths requirements put in place by Ofqual were either not assessed or if they were, it was often in a very limited way.

The RSC has long been championing maths support for chemists. The RSC Education Discover Maths for Chemists website brings together resources from a variety of other platforms and is searchable from both a mathematical and chemical perspective. Recently checked for functionality and links, Discover Maths for Chemists is newly refreshed! The search function enables students to link together concepts and topics from both maths and chemistry to find worksheets, video tutorials and interactive quizzes applicable to their need. By using the Discover Maths for Chemists resource students can see what is expected of them if they go on to study chemistry at university - something that seems to be lacking from today's exam boards.

Learn Chemistry launches brand new videos in collaboration with BASF showcasing cutting-edge research on organic photovoltaics.

Organic photovoltaics are a hot research area at the moment, and they are the theme of our latest instalment to the Faces of Chemistry collection. We have teamed up with the global chemical company BASF to produce a new set of videos on organic photovoltaics (organic solar cells).

Filmed in Ludwigshafen (Germany), Dr Ingmar Bruder, Project Team Leader and the star of the show, tells us how organic solar cells work and where we could find them in the future. One application that Ingmar and his team have been working on is integrating organic solar cells onto the rooftop of Daimler’s new Smart Forvision concept car. With BASF’s expertise in producing dyes, Ingmar and his team created a new dye-class which converts the sunlight’s energy into electrical energy – powering the multimedia and ventilation system in the car. Find out more by watching the videos.



Ingmar is a natural actor in these videos! In fact, we were so impressed, we wanted to produce a teaser video in German too! So if you want to test your German then why not watch our video in German, ‘Gesichter der Chemie’.


Not only are these videos valuable from an educational point of view, they also highlight where chemistry can take you in the future. If I was still working in a lab, this is exactly the sort of work I would want to be doing!

What is Faces of Chemistry?
For those of you who aren’t already in the know, Faces of Chemistry is an exciting series of videos from the RSC, aimed at students aged 11-19. The videos give insight into real-life applications of chemistry and highlight the latest cutting-edge research involved in making new products and technologies. Produced in collaboration with leading chemical companies and academic institutes, Faces of Chemistry also showcases the diversity of professional careers available to students of chemistry. Other videos include catalysts (Johnson Matthey), crop protection products (Syngenta) and hair colourants (Procter & Gamble).

We hope you enjoy these videos and be sure to watch the space for more Faces of Chemistry videos in the coming months.

Learn Chemistry is still just a young thing, but already people are saying "Haven't you grown!" and pinching its cheek. Read on for the latest changes to the RSC's home for chemistry education resources.               




Today, 16th April, a new Learn Chemistry homepage went live.

In our ongoing efforts to make Learn Chemistry your one-stop-shop for chemistry education resources and activities we've given the front of our site a spit and polish, adding functions and links to make it easier for teachers and students of chemistry to find what they're looking for from RSC Education.

If you've not already seen our new site, go now to www.rsc.org/learn-chemistry. [hint: if you still see the old site, hit ‘refresh’ on your browser, or ‘F5’ if on a PC]. We’ve been beavering away behind the scenes to bring you the following improvements:

• A new homepage, featuring:
  • Simpler resource browse and search panels, including top 5 resources.
  • Links to RSC Education activities, teacher training, and careers advice pages
  • Links to related RSC websites and our popular Chemistry World and Education in Chemistry magazines.
• Speedier search and browse. Pages load faster and results come quicker.
• Cleverer search. You’ll no longer have to type a search phrase in speechmarks if you want to prioritise a resource with that exact name or description.
• A home for Faces of Chemistry. Faces of Chemistry, one of our top resource sets, now has its own page, on which you can browse all the video resources. New videos from BASF will be added very soon!
• New error pages. You’ll get a softer landing if we have no resources, or you stumble upon a broken page in Learn Chemistry.
• System maintenance updates. You’ll get prior warning on the homepage when large changes are about to go live.

As always, let us know what you think. Email us at learn-chemistry@rsc.org, with feedback, problems, compliments or complaints!

We'll use your feedback over the next month to continue to make improvements, and sometime soon Learn Chemistry will come of age, discard its training wheels, and lose its 'Beta' tag. Watch this space...

100 years on: New ChemNet competition aims to find out how chemistry is linked with Titanic tragedy

One hundred years ago, on April 10^th 1912, the first ever ‘unsinkable’ passenger liner left the port of Southampton on her maiden voyage – the RMS Titanic. But even the especially designed watertight compartments could not prevent the outcome of the tragic collision with an iceberg in the North Atlantic Ocean only four days later. This Sunday marks the 100^th year anniversary of the sinking of RMS Titanic following this collision.  

To commemorate the tragic event, the last few weeks have seen – amongst other activities – a memorial cruise on the MS Balmoral that retraces the steps of the Titanic’s first and only voyage and the re-launch of James Cameron’s romantic disaster film ‘Titanic’ in 3D. But even if you do not fancy watching Kate and Leo, you can still join in on ‘Titanic’-related activities because we have made the sinking of the passenger liner the theme of this month’s ChemNet competition.

ChemNet is the RSC network for 16-18 years old chemistry students, and every month we pose a chemistry-related question to our ChemNet discussion group members. So what does a sinking ship have to do with chemistry, you might wonder? To keep it simple: a whole lot more than you think. Because without chemistry, there would be no icebergs. And therefore this month’s question is:

“If water behaved as almost all other liquids do when they freeze, we would not have icebergs. Why does water behave differently when it freezes?”

If you are a chemistry student between 16 and 18 years old, we want to hear your answers. To enter, please email your responses to chemnet@rsc.org by Monday 30^th April. The winning answer will be selected by our Dr ChemNet experts.

Last month we asked our ChemNet members ‘What is chemistry?’ ‘That’s simple!‘ you say? Maybe not so much so, when you start thinking of all the things that chemistry encompasses and having to describe it in less than 50 words. But our members didn’t let us down and surprised us with some very thoughtful and creative answers. To find out what the winning answers by Thomas Sayer, Timothy Little and Sophie Jones were, just take a look at the ChemNet discussion group.

We've just launched our 'Chemistry in the Olympics' website and global experiment.

The site went live earlier today, featuring information and data entry pages for our global experiment, and dozens of resources exploring chemistry in sport. The global experiment will test the effects of sports drinks on athletic performance and encourage participation in students of all ages. Children in school and at home are encouraged to take part, ideally before the start of this year's London Olympics!

Alistair Brownlee, twice world champion triathlete and former chemistry student, introduces our global experiment site and talks about the role chemistry played in his own education and how chemistry is vital to his sport.

Visit our Global Experiment page at www.rsc.org/sport and get involved!

As we at the RSC prepare for Cambridge Science Festival (12 – 25 March 2012) I ask…why do we love science festivals? Surely everyone interested in science will already be sold on it and those not into science will shied away from them.

A recent poll by researchers for the Big Bang UK Young Scientists and Engineers Fair found two-thirds of parents struggled to answer their children’s science questions on a daily basis. Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t that a great opportunity for both parent and child to investigate, experiment and learn together?

Of course, I believe that science festivals are great. What’s not to love about children and eventually adults getting themselves elbow deep in slime? Of gently being introduced to science they hadn’t even thought of? In making science far less scary than it might seem at school (or seemed at school). Stimulating young minds to observe and explain the world around them can only be a good thing. And if this means parents can’t answer their children’s questions, then so be it.

Science festivals can be a great way not only to encourage everyone of all ages to think about science, but also to learn the answers together. The activities demonstrated have been chosen to inspire questions and the people demonstrating them are knowledgeable about not only the subject at hand, but many other things. These people are at your fingertips...use them!