Something for everyone

Something for everyone was the aim of the Chemistry Week program organised by the Aberdeen & North Scotland Section. It began with an RSC sponsored event "Fantastic Fireworks" at Satrosphere, Aberdeen's very own science centre on Saturday 5 and Sunday 6 November where families where invited to create colour explosions and paint a picture that glowed in the dark. Spectacular demonstrations were given by Satrosphere staff.

Our second event was for Secondary School pupils. Sixty pupils aged 12-14 years visited the Robert Gordon University to take part in workshops. This fun-filled afternoon saw them squashing up strawberries and extracting the DNA, revealing fingerprints using Aluminium powder, learning to detect accelerants as part of forensic fire investigation and muddling their senses by eating raspberry flavoured orange jelly.

There were two evening events; firstly a lively debate on "Nuclear power; Do we need it?". The debate was chaired by Ken Rundle from BBC Scotland and opened with an excellent summary of the UK's current energy provision by Professor Fred Glasser.  Professor Iain Bryden then went on to discuss alternative energy sources and the extent of the current sources of oil, gas, coal, and nuclear fuel putting forward the view that nuclear power will play an important part in the middle of this decade but that it will decline in the later part. Professor Jim Penman discussed global warming due to CO₂ emissions posing the question "which is the bigger problem, dealing with waste or with CO₂? Unless nuclear fuel is used the lights will go out, yet investment in nuclear fuel will take away investment from renewable energy." The debate was then opened to the floor. Over sixty people attended the debate.

The second evening event was a talk by Dr Alex Johnstone "Do Diets Work?". About 40 people came along to hear Alex, who carries out research into prevention and treatment of Human obesity at the world renowned Rowett Research Institute in Aberdeen. She then dispelled most of the myths which surround dieting and weight loss in an entertaining and humorous presentation. Such myths as "I have big bones", I have a slow metabolic rate, and discussed different diets such as high fat, high protein, or low fat, concluding that if energy input is greater than energy output then weight will be gained! The audience really enjoyed her talk and plied her with many questions at the end.

Chemistry Week ended with a fun-filled day for families at Satrosphere, on Saturday. Families were invited to participate in a range of fun activities including making slime and superballs, bouncing soap bubbles on dry ice, magic writing (cobalt chloride), making Christmas tree decorations from shrinking plastic cups, seeing many colours emerge from felt pens, using red cabbage to see which substances are acid or alkaline and firing Alka-Seltzer pop guns. More than 100 people came along to this event which also included a demonstration of "Colourful Chemistry", held three times throughout the day, by Dr Hazel Wilkins from the Robert Gordon University. Here she held the children spell bound with her display of glowing liquids, colourful flames and rainbow colours from colourless liquids. Helping the staff from Satrosphere were staff and postgraduate students from both the University of Aberdeen and the Robert Gordon University. Indeed this was such a fun event it was difficult to decide whether it was the staff and students or the families who had most fun!