Henry VIII’s flag, the Mary Rose, has had a new museum open in Portsmouth today. The ship that sank in 1545 was discovered in 1971, and finally raised from the seabed in 1982 watched live on television in front of an estimated 60 million people worldwide.  

The ship has been reconstructed just yards from where it was originally built. After resurfacing from the depths of The Solent, it was sprayed with water continuously until 1994 and then polyethylene glycol, a type of wax, in order to help preserve it. It will take 4 years to dry using air tubes in a ‘hot box’. Until then, the public will be able to view the wreck through windows.
In 2004, the RSC teamed up with the Mary Rose Trust, V&A Museum and the British Museum to produce the book Conservation chemistry – an introduction. The book is in three sections; each one led by a museum and discusses the chemistry behind the conservation of wood, plastics and stone, respectively. These sections can each be found on Learn Chemistry or purchased as the whole book from our bookstore.

The book shows how chemical techniques are used in conserving objects made from a wide variety of materials and seeks to introduce some of the ethical considerations of conservation to students. We hope this book will encourage teachers and students alike to see the chemical context of the most unlikely scenarios.

In Search of Solution is a collection of challenges, also known as egg races, which originally took-off in the early 1980s. Some of these egg races are competitive, others are investigative, either way practical problem solving with a chemical flavour has remained popular.

Some activities included teachers will have been doing for years, others will be new to them, but all are great fun. They can be used not only to enhance a topic taught in lesson time, but also as an end of term activity or in science clubs. But why should students have all the fun? They have also been used to promote chemistry to the public and inside there may be some good ideas for open days and for parents and governors!

Teacher notes are provided and give an indication of some of the approaches used by students and teachers when tackling the different problems.

Some of the egg races include: A birthday cake candle timer, Name the liquid, The ups and downs of chemistry and Quick jelly, as well as 46 others. The names are intriguing; have fun discovering what their challenge is!

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 in 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, etc. 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 career 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.