About the exhibits

Here you will find details of just a few of the exciting exhibits which will be touring the shopping centres this Chemistry Week

Stars 'R' Us 

Stars 'R' Us is a team of astrochemists from Chemistry and Physics departments at the Universities of Nottingham, Strathclyde, Open University and University College London, and a research scientist from the Royal Greenwich Observatory, who won the chance to exhibit their science to the public at the Royal Society Summer Exhibition 2004 to great success. The exhibit leads the public from star birth to star death via nucleosynthesis; the formation of molecules, the existence of dust and ice in space and the potential for creating molecules such as amino-acids, sugars and complex organic molecules. These are the building blocks of life, and are all made under the extreme conditions of cold, dark, 'empty' space. The public get a chance to understand how we 'see' into dark space using 'heat' or infrared radiation, and how we can spot the chemicals lurking there using spectroscopy. The exhibit stresses how observations at telescopes by astronomers are combined with work done by scientists in their laboratories, studying chemical reactions under 'space' conditions.

Catch That Molecule!

Hydrogen storage for fuel cells is an item on the agenda of the University of Nottingham's stand 'Catch That Molecule!' which presents research on 'nano test tubes' and chemical nanoscience. Professor Neil Champness and his colleagues have created molecular sponges, 3D matrices filled with nanometer-width pores, in which they hope to trap hydrogen molecules. This is a tricky business, as Champness explained. 'Hydrogen is a very difficult molecule to trap for two reasons. One is that it is very, very small. The other is that it is extremely reactive. So the sponge needs to be able to identify the hydrogens and interact with them in a very soft way. You don't want to be too hard otherwise you'll pop the hydrogen bonds and get an explosion.' Champness and his team are working towards being able to control hydrogen storage and release, and are part of a consortium working towards a hydrogen storage system that could be used in a car. This is of great interest because in a hydrogen fuel cell the only by-product is water. 

Putting the Fizz into Chemistry

The Clean Technology Group at the University of Nottingham are leading a green revolution in chemistry. By using carbon dioxide instead of traditional solvents, they are finding ways of making chemical reactions cleaner. Before it will work as a solvent - in other words, before solids will dissolve into it - carbon dioxide has to be made 'supercritical'. 'If you compress a gas at room temperature it turns into a liquid,' explains Professor Martyn Poliakoff. 'If you compress it at a rather higher temperature, above the so-called critical point, it won't turn into a liquid no matter how much you compress it, but it does get quite dense. This means that it behaves partly like a liquid and partly like a gas, so you can dissolve things in it as if it was a liquid. 'The advantage of using supercritical carbon dioxide as a solvent is that when you release the pressure at the end of the reaction, the carbon dioxide is released as a gas, leaving the chemical products pure and clean. The exhibit includes a live demonstration of how a supercritical fluid is formed.