Chemistry on YouTube: “Periodic Table of Videos” Wins SPORE Prize

A few years ago, we post­ed about an ambi­tious project out of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Not­ting­ham called The Peri­od­ic Table of Videos. The project is pret­ty much exact­ly what it sounds like – an online peri­od­ic table in which each and every ele­ment gets its own brief intro­duc­to­ry video, “star­ring” the researchers and fac­ul­ty of the uni­ver­si­ty’s chem­istry depart­ment. Video jour­nal­ist Brady Haran has kept each episode loose and unscript­ed, and the sci­en­tists’ enthu­si­asm for their sub­ject is infec­tious, even — or per­haps espe­cial­ly — when their exper­i­ments go awry (Keep an eye out espe­cial­ly for the won­der­ful­ly wooly Pro­fes­sor Poli­akoff, whose hair alone should earn him first billing).

We were delight­ed to learn that the PTOV has just been award­ed a very well-deserved Sci­ence Prize for Online Resources by the Amer­i­can Asso­ci­a­tion for the Advance­ment of Sci­ence. In fact, the project has proven so suc­cess­ful over­all that Haran has embarked on a sim­i­lar col­lab­o­ra­tion with the uni­ver­si­ty’s physics depart­ment, and he’s also brought the chemists back for a new series about mol­e­cules. The most pop­u­lar video from that series, which we’ve post­ed above, address­es a ques­tion that has kept us all up till dawn at least once in our lives: What hap­pens when a cheese­burg­er is dunked in hydrochlo­ric acid?

Don’t miss the free chem­istry cours­es list­ed in our col­lec­tion of 380 Free Online Cours­es.

via ArsTech­ni­ca

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly