The Periodic Table of Videos: MolVids

This fast-track proposal has been prompted by the continuing suggestions from YouTube viewers of our Periodic Table of Videos (PTOV) that we should extend our scientific coverage to include topical molecules of general interest. PTOV is a website www.periodicvideos.com based on YouTube where viewers can click on any one of the 118 elements and watch a video about that element. PTOV is a collaboration between East Midlands-based freelance video journalist Brady Haran and a team of chemists at the University of Nottingham. Initially completed in July 2008, PTOV has been updated weekly with new videos; some about elements or topical subjects, as well as chemical road trips to Sweden, Ethiopia and the USA. On average, each video has been watched 35-40k times, and two have had > 350k hits; the whole site has attracted more than 7 million hits (excluding multiple viewing by school classes across the world). We believe that PTOV is now one of the most successful science channels on YouTube and it was highlighted in the 2009 EPSRC International Review of Chemistry. Funding for PTOV has come partly from EPSRC with more than matching funds from the University of Nottingham. PTOV has now spawned a sister website, Sixty Symbols www.sixtysymbols.com applying a similar approach to physics. In this Proposal we are seeking modest funding to apply the same approach to the chemistry of molecules, under the provisional name MolVids, with the aim of combining chemically informative videos with an enthusiastic and often humorous tone which we have found to resonate with viewers across the world from primary school age to Nobel Laureates. Specifically, we are requesting funding to support collaboration with Brady Haran, for a macro lens to add to our video camera, and modest consumables for demonstrations that will be recorded for new videos. Life on the internet moves fast, therefore we are seeking fast-track funding so that we do not lose momentum.MolVids is a significant and, we believe, educationally valuable extension of our existing PTOV website. It will enable us for the first time to bring organic chemistry to a wide ranging YouTube audience and will allow us to highlight the chemical problems associated with many of the issues of climate change and sustainability that are currently major concerns of the public in general and young people in particular. The EPSRC International Review of Chemistry commented on the value-for-money of PTOV as a public engagement activity. We believe that MolVids will be equally cost-effective. If we succeed in repeating the viewing figures that we have achieved for our PTOV clips, a conservative estimate suggests that the proposed MolVids should attract 1 million hits within 2 years of the start of the project.