On Monday 22^nd October the official opening of University of Liverpool’s £23 million central teaching laboratory took place.  Everyone raised a glass as it was opened by Nobel Prize winner and current President of Royal Society Sir Paul Nurse, Executive Pro-Vice-Chancellor Professor Steve Holloway, and Vice Chancellor Professor Sir Howard Newby. 
 
The Central Teaching Laboratories (CTL) facility aims to lead the way in changing scientific teaching provision across UK universities.  They plan to do this by housing undergraduate labs for chemistry, physics, earth and environmental sciences and archaeology undergraduate labs under one roof.  
 
After the official opening tours around the impressive building were carried out by physics outreach undergraduates, who started studying in this building a few weeks ago and who are already feeling the benefits with access to brand new, state of the art scientific equipment.  As well as new labs which can accommodate up to 1,000 students, the building provides a flexible teaching space suitable for workshops and a computing centre. 

The two chemistry labs are based on the top floor with the synthesis lab containing 67 fume cupboards and a large space for demonstrators to mark and go through work with the students.  There was a separate area with 28 balances, multiple FTIR spectrometers and a small computer suite.  Their NMR machine is still based in the main chemistry department but this shouldn’t affect students too greatly as they don’t use NMR until their 3^rd year of undergraduate. 
 
The labs will also be used for Outreach purposes for local schools and colleges.  The University already offers events for school groups in laboratories and supported activities in local schools to inspire school children and enhance their education.  Due to multiple disciplines being housed in the same building it will hopefully encourage inter-disciplinary interaction of these physical sciences.