The E-Word and other Chemical Stories

Over the course of the last two years I have significantly widened my range of media contacts and i have been been involved in a number of major projects including Science and Islam, Chaos, Elements, and Science Stories to which I have made significant contributions. I have also been brought basic chemistry, physics and thermodynamics to a number of areas not normally treated in this way by the general public - beer, cocktails, coffee, curry etc. and presented science slots in television series devoted to food. On the strength of the contacts I have built I would like to expand the work I have done so far and focus more on being an advocate for chemistry. I have four major directions in mind. 1. To talk about carbon dioxide and its relation to energy (The E-Word) in our world and in particular to try to put ideas about energy into context and provide a sense of scale by making driect comparisons between everyday energy uses.2. To talk about mercury and our love/hate relationship with it. Mercury has played a role in almost every major discovery in the physical sciences between the 17th and the mid 20th century. It was also widely used in medicine. Yet its toxicity was something of which even the ancients were aware. I would like to use mercury as a classic example of the trade-off between costs and benefits in technology.3. To talk about molecules and the extent to which their properties and their technology permeates our lives. This would be a direct development from the two BBC4 series Atom and Elements. 4. To talk about the materials that lie at the heart of objects and devices in the everyday world. This would complement the recent series Atom and Elements whilst in a sense be more closely tied in with the interests of the broader population. We would ask questions about where the materials come from and how they are made, and how our choices and demands have political, environmental, and economic implications in the world. 5. I will continue to discuss chemistry, physics and materials science in everyday contexts, particularly developing the Science of Cocktails sessions that I recently started hosting.

The impacts from my fellowship are likely to be largely intangible yet significant. My aim is to help bring scientific questions more into the mainstream of everyday culture. The issues associated with climate change and new technology on the other face us with significant dilemmas and choices. The decisions that are taken now will have resonances for decades to come. It is crucial therefore that we bring scientific issues alive and help inform some of the choices that need to be made. If we do not stand up and explain the science and the implications of our technology together with the fact that we have to accept some negative consequences not matter what choice we take, then the decisions will be swayed and driven by interest groups able to exploit the lack of a scientific culture in the population as a whole. My aims are to have an impact at a national level, by getting people interested in areas of basic science not normally shown on television. A key part of this will be by showing them the extraordinary behaviour of ordinary things. I intend to combine television programming with accompanying web material to extend the reach of anything I present, since ultimately web pages have a much longer lifetime. A second impact is in work with children, for example via Gastronuts which gets huge audiences on CBBC. Because children tend to decide which subjects they prefer around age 11, this is a key target group. My plan is to encourage wider impact of these contributions by providing accompanying web material to go with the material I present on the programme. A third area is to encourage members of my department to interact more with the media and this has been rising over the past two years. I am pushing students to produce more videos for the web. My activities will help to encourage the importance of this kind of work in colleagues both within my own department and beyond.