Faces of Chemistry – like so many things, our popular video series started with an idea! We wanted to show students of all ages how chemistry applies to real life and how the latest cutting-edge research leads to many different new products and technologies.

It’s been almost two years since we launched our first videos. Since then you might have heard Meloney Morris from Syngenta explain how chemistry helps to protect crops, watched scientists from Procter & Gamble tell you about why they love developing new hair colourants or found out more about organic solar cells from BASF’s Ingmar Bruder.

We’ve loved making these videos and hope that you’ve enjoyed watching them just as much. But at the same time we thought that Faces of Chemistry could be so much more than this. We wanted it to represent all sorts of people doing all sorts of things with chemistry, not just those working industry or academia.

So Faces of Chemistry has undergone a mini revolution.

And to mark the occasion, we’ve built a brand new microsite. It’s now mobile- and tablet-friendly, meaning you can easily flick through our features ‘faces’ on mobile phones, iPads and Co. whilst you’re on the go.



But we’ve not just made it easier to browse the videos. We’ve also added two new sections: ‘Inspirational chemists’ and ‘Careers with chemistry’ (coming soon) join the existing ‘Inside the lab’ videos. So in addition to leaning more about the chemistry found in many products and items that we use every day, you can now also find out what inspired others to become chemists and how diverse the careers options with a background in chemistry can be.

When you visit our new Faces of Chemistry site, you will hopefully notice that it is a lot easier to find and play the videos you’re looking for. The Inside the Lab section, pictured below, is divided into three tabs for the different age groups. You’ll also be able to click the ‘view resource’ link below the videos to see all the Faces of Chemistry videos we have on that specific topic.



We’d love to hear what you think about Faces of Chemistry’s new look. So please do get in touch. And if you have any suggestions about what you’d like to see here, then feel free to let us know. We are always looking for your feedback (good or bad) to help shape our future developments.

Enjoy using the new Faces of Chemistry site, and keep your eyes peeled for the new Careers with Chemistry section coming soon!

I've long been a fan of Google Maps, and I was pleased indeed to see the combined efforts of Chris Lloyd from SSERC in Scotland and England's adopted son Andrea Sella, in the creation of two new chemistry landmark Google maps.

First, north of the border, Chris Lloyd has used the brand-new Google Maps Engine to create an interactive map of locations in Scotland in chemistry history, organised around three headings: Births and Deaths, Educational Work, and Workplaces, Monuments, etc. Use the menu panel to tick or untick the categories.

For England, Wales, France, and beyond, see UCL prof. Andrea Sella's Chemistry Landmarks map, showing "places where chemists and other leading scientists worked, lived, or died in the UK."

Both maps are works in progress, and will be added to and updated in due course. In fact, you can add locations for Scotland to Chris's spreadsheet, or contact Chris via MyRSC. You can get in touch with Andrea at 'a dot sella at ucl dot ac dot uk' [spelt out to avoid spambots...].

If you're a teacher, why not combine these maps with our spiffing On This Day in Chemistry interactive calendar, to help unpick the places, personalities and events behind modern chemistry. Happy exploring!

To celebrate their 50th anniversary this year, Education in Chemistry has teamed up with Spiring Enterprises to offer you the chance to win some molecular modelling kits for your school.

The task
We would like you to design a worksheet (a single side of A4) for a 16-18 year old student to teach them some aspect of chirality using molecular modelling, and submit it using the online form.

A set of diagrams describing solar fuels and artificial synthesis has now been added to Learn Chemistry. These diagrams were part of a policy report, Solar Fuels and Artificial Photosynthesis: Science and innovation to change our future energy options, produced by the RSC Science team and released at the 1st UK Solar to Fuels Symposium, held in London in January 2012.

The release of the report marked the beginning of the RSC's programme of activities to raise awareness of the environmental and economic potential of solar fuels and artificial photosynthesis, and to support scientists working in this field.

The diagrams communicate the key ideas and processes of solar fuel production and artificial photosynthesis, perfect for any interested reader who wants to learn a bit more about how solar fuels work. The policy report is also available, as well as a related article released in our 16-18 year old chemistry magazine, the Mole, which contexualises the report. We hope you enjoy them on Learn Chemistry! Keep an eye out for more Science policy resources which we hope to add in the coming months.

As per popular demand, Chemical Misconceptions – prevention, diagnosis and cure. Volume I: theoretical background by Keith Taber has now been added to Learn Chemistry. This resource includes information about some of the key misconceptions that have been uncovered by research and ideas about a variety of teaching approaches that may help avoid students acquiring some common misconceptions.

Each theory chapter can be used in conjunction with chapters of Volume II. These are shown in the linked resources section below the main chapter (shown below). There is also information on how to use the resource, additional reading and a keywords index to show in which section which topics are covered.

Next month I’ll be adding In Search of Solutions to Learn Chemistry. Add your requests for the next resource in line to Talk Chemistry.

We recognise the Challenging Plants and Challenging Medicines resources contain a huge amount of information in the form of presentations, handouts, worksheets and experiment sheets for teachers and students. With 100 resources in Challenging Plants and over 50 in Challenging Medicines it is difficult to see how the resources link to each other and how seemingly biology-based resources are linked to topics taught by teachers every day.

We have now provided pedagogical overviews for Plants and Medicines, as well as spider diagrams showing how the resources link to each other.

The Challenging Plants Experiment resources can be seen as sets (shown below) of ‘preparation of salts’, ‘preparing and investigating inorganic complexes’, ‘analysing solutions using colorimetric measurements’, ‘rates of reaction’, ‘chemistry investigations’ and ‘plant chemistry/biology experiment’ – all areas a teacher needs to cover. These experiments can give a teacher the option to use a different experiment to demonstrate, for example, making salts, and do so with supporting material that gives the experiment a real-life context. The handouts and presentations are also linked through subject areas (shown below). These materials can be used in conjunction with the experiments to form topics and possible project work.

We hope these will be a helpful guide to the mass of information available through Challenging Plants and Challenging Medicines!

They belong to Christmas like turkey and mince pies: the Royal Institution (Ri) Christmas lectures. Each year they bring a touch of science straight to our living rooms.

The lectures are fantastic every year. But for us at the RSC, last year’s ones were even more special, because they focused on chemistry.

In his three lectures, Dr Peter Wothers – a chemist at Cambridge University – explored the chemistry around us. Filling the TV studio with lightning, explosions and burning flames, he looked at air, water and earth – three of the ancient Greek elements that tantalised alchemists for centuries – and the chemistry behind them. It was a fantastic display of why chemistry is fun.

But don’t worry if you missed the spectacle when the lectures were aired on the television! The RSC and our Learn Chemistry team partnered with the Ri to turn the best parts from the lectures into a set of teaching resources.
 
The resources are based around ten chemistry-related themes that Peter covered in his Modern Alchemist lectures. Many of them cover topics you are teaching in the classroom, such as atomic structure and the periodic table, radioactivity, climate change, the halogens and the alkali metals.


Dr Peter Wothers demonstrates the effect of altering the amount of oxygen present in the air

We have included background information, links to video clips from the lectures, questions and ideas for group discussion to help you teach these subjects. And if you or your students would like to find out more about a topic, you can easily follow the links to other Learn Chemistry resources on related topics.

We hope you enjoy using these new resources in your classes!

The Learn Chemistry team

Ps: If you haven’t seen it already, why not have a look at the Alchemy section on our Visual Elements Periodic Table?!

In my role as keeper of legacy material, I have added the lengthily titled Chemical Misconceptions – prevention, diagnosis and cure. Volume II: classroom resources by Keith Taber to Learn Chemistry. This popular book has long been missing from Learn Chemistry and I hope our users will be pleased it has finally been added!

I am aiming to add a legacy resource a month, which will be advertised here on Elementary Articles and the Learn Chemistry Newsletter. If you have any requests for what to add next, comment below!

The Science Museum has launched an online poll to identify the top British innovations of the 20th Century.

Among the extensive list is X-ray crystallography (found right at the bottom of the voting page). The University of Leeds are championing this as William H. Bragg (the father of the father and son duo awarded the 1915 Nobel Prize in Physics) held the Cavendish Chair of Physics at Leeds from 1909-15, when the key experiments involving the first crystal structure determinations and the formulation of Bragg's Law for X-ray diffraction were carried out.

Take a look at all the entries and cast your vote here. Voting ends on 25th March so you've not got long to make your vote count!

Joanna Buckley is RSC Regional Coordinator for North East England and works with the education team.
Contact her at joanna.buckley@sheffield.ac.uk

Fabulous news from Friday night's Education Resources Awards ceremony at the National Motorcyle Museum near Birmingham:

Learn Chemistry has won the 2013 Education Resources Award for 'Best Secondary Resources or Equipment - Including ICT'


The Education Resources Awards complement the large annual Education show, held annually at the Birmingham NEC. 
 
The judges' remarks in giving the award to the RSC's hub for chemistry education recognises the effort and energy RSC Education has put into developing Learn Chemistry: