A taste for chemistry

Over 90 Year 9 and 10 students from 16 schools in London, Kent and Hertfordshire attended the Royal Society of Chemistry sponsored university taster day on Wednesday 3 July in the Department of Chemistry at the Mile End campus of Queen Mary University London (QMUL).

By Tippu Sheriff

The morning session commenced with an interactive lecture and demonstration entitled "Chemistry is Kool!",containing thrills and spills with liquid nitrogen, cardice (solid carbon dioxide) and a demonstration of the explosive self-defence mechanism of a bombardier beetle.

This was followed by a talk entitled "Why Study Science/Chemistry?", showing that chemistry is a central science and that we depend on chemists from the time we wake up and brush our teeth to the time we take our final meal at the end of a day. We also explained how studying chemistry in higher education can lead to a variety of careers both within science, perhaps with a white coat, as well as those completely outside of science such as in the financial sector, patent law and business.

The morning culminated with 10 minute presentations by some current and former students of chemistry at QMUL, followed by a lively Q&A session. In the afternoon the students had experience of practical chemistry in the undergraduate teaching laboratory in the Joseph Priestley building and used flame tests, qualitative tests and paper chromatography to solve a murder mystery. They also had the opportunity to synthesise slime and test its properties, make a cream and an ointment to take home, and extract DNA from fruit.

The day was an excellent way to promote chemistry and the study of chemistry at QMUL and the student evaluations showed that while ~50% of the students had only an average or below average interest in chemistry at the start of the day, by the end >90% expressed an above average interest, with 42 students describing their interest in chemistry as "excellent" – an increase of 200% compared to that at the start of the day.

The comments by the students were overwhelmingly positive.

It was all smiles as the students left with rucksack goody bags in the dark blue of QMUL. These had been specially printed with an image of Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev to mark UNESCO’s celebration of the International Year of the Periodic Table.