Marking our 500th video

Our periodicvideos chemistry channel has now uploaded 500 videos.

To mark this milestone (in base 10, at least) we've posted a few videos.

The main one is this music montage of highlights from the last five-and-a-half years.



Thanks to Alan Stewart for the great track, written specially for the occasion.

We also posted two Q&A videos, with Professor Martyn Polikaoff answer questions from our viewers (posted via Twitter and Facebook).

Here's the first:



And the second:



Periodicvideos stars various chemists from the School of Chemistry and the University of Nottingham.

Weddings, Rings and Chemistry Cakes

Some pictures I've been meaning to share - these relate to weddings and chemistry.

The first comes from Thilina - a periodicvideos fan from Sri Lanka.

Dedicated viewers may remember Thilina - he was the young lad who received a tie from Professor Poliakoff at the 2010 Asian Science Camp in India.



Thilina has remained in regular contact and sent us this picture from his wedding!

And ever the chemistry nut, this was Thilina's wedding cake!

I hope his wife likes chemistry too!

This second tale comes from a viewer named David Adams.

Back in 2011, David submitted a viewer question which said the following:

"I am getting married to my fiancé next year (although I not sure who else anyone would get married to other than their fiancé, but anyway). There are obviously the standard metals of gold, silver and platinum. There are also some slightly more interesting options like tungsten and titanium. But is there anything more interesting that this? What metals would be non-toxic and suitable for a jeweler to work with? Neodymium perhaps? Maybe one for Pete?"

David's question resulted in the following video:



Well, much like Thilina's, this story has a conclusion.

I've just received the following email and photo from David:

Hi Brady

You may may recall me asking you guys what interesting metals would make a good wedding ring which you then made a video about.

I was quite pleased as to the extent for which I managed to stump the team and I was entertained by their responses.

Anyway, I thought I should let you know what we went for...

My wife Sarah chose diamonds set in platinum to match her engagement ring. Diamonds as the prettiest element and platinum as one of the most expensive. 

I went for tungsten. Although a cheap metal (and certainly cheaper than Sarah's - you could probably do a Numberphile video on the order of magnitude difference in the price) it was the perfect choice.

Firstly for its colour: a dark, masculine metal. Secondly for its strength, representing our love (and will preserve the brushed effect longer). 

And thirdly due to one of its most common uses: light bulb filaments. We both work in television as studio managers and I have a particular specialism in television camera colorimetry.

Tungsten plays a hugely important role in what we do everyday so seemed a fitting choice. 

The number 3200 is etched into everything we do. 

Thank you to you and the team for a brilliant video and please find a picture of our rings attached.

Kind regards

David

PS: Perhaps a Sixty Symbols videos in lightbulbs and tungsten?

A Special Visitor from Italy

I'm on holiday at the moment, but was just CC'd on a great email from Professor Martyn Poliakoff in Nottingham.

Here it is, with some pictures too. (The email was addressed to Chris Rudd, pro-vice-chancellor at the University of Nottingham)

Dear Chris,

Yesterday (Sept 15th) was, I think, the best day that we have ever had for PTOV because a 10-year old Italian fan, Edoardo, was brought specially to Nottingham by his mother as his 10th birthday present.

Edoardo attended the demonstration lecture for A-level students, sitting in the front row, and putting up his hand to answer questions!  

He brought some biscuits as a present for the team, and cards for Pete, Sam, Debbie and me.  

After the lecture he visited my office and went to lab with Pete Licence. 

With Pete Licence in the lab

An experiment with Pete

With The Prof (details of the card below)

Edoardo has watched all the videos, quoting from them, and even reciting perfectly the limerick about DDT! 

His mother said that last year Edoardo chose "Chemistry" as the conversation topic for his English test at school.

It was really a moving experience. It's occasions like this that makes it all worthwhile.

Martyn

Edoardo's card

In the chemistry lunch room

YouTube in Schools

A common complaint I hear is that schools block YouTube - making videos difficult to use in classrooms.

Every week I get emails from frustrated teachers unable to share videos with students.

I've discussed it several times with people at Google (the owners of YouTube) and they've always said "we are working on it".

Well, they HAVE worked on it.

Many of my channels are now part of a program to improve school access to appropriate content.

Sixty Symbols, Periodic Videos and Numberphile are all part of it, among others.

To find out more you apparently visit youtube.com/schools

To be honest I don't yet know how it works... but wanted to share this news as soon as possible.

I hope it means scenes like the one below will become more common and scientists like The Professor will speak to millions more young people!

50,000 Subscribers

Our periodicvideos YouTube channel reached 50,000 subscribers last night.

The historic subscription came from someone in Croatia... I've emailed the person to try and find out more about them.

I'm also working on a special video to mark the milestone. That will be coming soon.

In the meantime, here's bit of a favourite video about our work covering the elements.



PS: In the same evening, our physics channel Sixty Symbols reached its 40,000th subscriber!