Some photos from the Webbys

We're just back from New York, where the Periodic Table of Videos was presented with a Webby Award.

If you believe the hype, the Webbys are the "Oscars of the Internet".

We won the reality video category.

Here are some photos of how it all unfolded (more pics and hi-res versions can be found on our Flickr page).

The weather before the event (on 34th St) looked bleak... You can barely see the Empire State Building behind.

Lesser lights (like us) pre-recorded their speeches in a makeshift studio. 

"Representing" for the East Side of the Atlantic were me (Brady Haran) with chemists Sam Tang and Darren Walsh! 

A Webby tradition - all winners are restricted to a five-word speech. You can watch ours, from two camera angles, below (CLICK PLAY):

A crew member transcribed our speech (with my corrected version below his attempt). Perhaps unsurprisingly, he struggled with the spelling of all three elements.

Non-science stars in attendance included Juliette Lewis, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Richard Dreyfus, Bjork, Louis CK and Spike Lee... But none of them mentioned chemistry!

We got on stage eventually!

The whole evening had a chemistry theme (seriously), because the slogan for the event was "The Year Distilled".

Even the flowers were in chemistry flasks with water and dry ice. We felt very much at home!

A very cool after party was held at the Edison Ballroom...

We snapped this in the trendy photobooth!

 We did some sightseeing (and filming) the next day at the highly oxidized Statue of Liberty... stay tuned for that one!

Dr Darren Walsh takes in the view.

 The Periodic Table of Videos team.

Higher resolution pictures (and more of them) are on our Flickr pages.

This week's videos

These are the videos I've uploaded this week for Numberphile, Deep Sky Videos, Sixty Symbols, Test Tube and Periodic Table of Videos.

















I think that is all?

Fan Mail from Max

We love getting fan mail at The Periodic Table of Videos (who doesn't).

But this one went the extra mile.

Seven-year-old Max, from Canada, got in touch with Professor Martyn "Malty?" Poliakoff.

It seems Max is a big fan of our videos, especially our visit to Darmstadt in Germany, where he hopes to visit:

Larger version on Flickr

Larger version of Flickr (note the clock like Martyn's)

Larger version of Flickr

We've popped this in the post back to Max...

A New Bottle for The Prof

Regular viewers will know Professor Martyn Poliakoff has an obsession with plastic bottles.

Here's just some of the collection from his office at The University of Nottingham.

We first explained the bottle collection - which comes from countless countries around the world - back in 2008 in this Test Tube video.



This week the bottle obsession reared its head again, in this video from our trip to Brazil.



Coincidentally, also this week, I gave The Prof a gift from my recent holiday to Mount Everest.

It was a framed print of this photo, take from the Kala Patthar viewpoint - perhaps the best view of Everest in the Himalayas.

The picture now resides in his office, fighting for attention among the many other bottles!!!

PS: I also brought The Prof a Nepalese bottle for the shelf... But I liked the photo better. Everest is the peak in the middle, below the sun. The peak to the right is Nuptse in the foreground.

Lucky Numbers and Stanislaw Ulam

I just uploaded a video about the so-called Lucky Numbers.

These numbers are derived using a sieve-type algorithm developed by the acclaimed mathematician Stanislaw Ulam.

The video explains what they are:



The first lucky numbers are 1, 3, 7, 9, 13, 15, 21, 25, 31, 33, 37, 43, 49, 51, 63, 67, 69, 73, 75, 79, 87, 93 and 99.

Checking a few facts, I was just reading a about Stanislaw Ulam.

It turns out he was born and dies on the 13th of the month (13 Apr 1909 - 13 May 1984).

13 is lucky number!

He lived to be 75 years old - another Lucky Number.

And the year of his birth - 1909 - was also the year a film called "The Lucky Number" was released.

A couple of pictures

Just been clearing my virtual desk top and stumbled over two pictures I was meaning to share.

One is recent and one I have had sitting on my computer for about a year?

First, here's an image that was shared by a Twitter friend was was excited when their lecturer/teacher made a recommendation to the students - this is what they wrote on the board:

Prof POLIAKOFF

(Uni of Nottingham)

www.periodicvideos.com

Good advice, no?

And secondly this image was sent by a virtual friend who claimed to see a derelict building and thought of the periodic table:

Feels like someone shares our obsession.

Some Everest Photos

I've been away for a few weeks, fulfilling my childhood dream of seeing Mt Everest.

A few facts and figures about the mountain appear in the latest Numberphile video - getting it out of my system I guess! :)



Anyway, here are a few more pics from the trip for people who are as captivated by the famous mountain as me.

A drink on the way up

Not bad for an iPhone pic (Everest and Nuptse)

The famous pyramid

Touching the summit!

Yaks in the Himalaya

Me and the mountain

We won a Webby

The Periodic Table of Videos has won a Webby Award - described as the internet's version of the Oscars?!

According to its website, the Webbys are "the leading international award honoring excellence on the Internet".

The awards are run by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences.

The judges named us this year's winners in the "reality online film/video" category.

The other nominees were:
Dog Park by Discovery Communications (*)
Failure Club by Yahoo!
100 Monkeys by Getty Images Music
Soldier Brother by National Film Board of Canada

The awards are being presented in New York later this month.

As is tradition, our challenge is to come up with a five-word acceptance speech. Any ideas?

We also might try to go to New York for the event if we can find a few other things to do there - so contact me with any ideas for periodicvideos we could make in the Big Apple!?

The Periodic Table of Videos is a collaboration between The University of Nottingham's School of Chemistry and independent video journalist Brady Haran.

(*) Congratulations Dog Park for winning the "people's choice" vote... Periodic Videos was named the judges' winner.

The Good and The Bad

It's always good to a take a break form work...

Over the last few weeks I went and saw something I've always been fascinated by - Mt Everest!

Of course a three-week break has a downside... including a Himalayan size mountain of unread emails!

Back to work then...