Sci@Night

I remember my first Chemistry lesson at secondary school. It was pretty fun. Our approval-hungry teacher, who ended up being generally regarded as obnoxious, knew exactly what his public wanted, and that’s exactly what they got;

Balloons tethered to the workbench and filled with mildly explosive gases. A lit splint on the end of a broom handle. The logical conclusion. These are things that make 12 year old boys go weak at the knees. Well, some.

In the age of YouTube, it’s good to see that educators are still taking advantage of simple chemistry with spectacular results. Dr Sarah Heath, Outreach Director for the School of Chemistry at The University of Manchester is making a mess with one of this year’s top internet phenomenons.

Dr. Heath… goes into schools in the Greater Manchester area to give exciting science demonstrations on solids, liquids and gases.

“I mentioned to my daughter that I was looking at doing the Mentos and Diet Coke experiment, and she said all her friends at her school had been talking about it.

“I think it’s a great thing because it’s got children interested in science. We can talk about the chemistry that lies behind it later, but the important thing is to capture their attention in the first place.”

And in case you were guessing…

“When you look at a Mento under a microscope you will see that it’s quite pitted and therefore has lots of nucleation sites, which causes the carbon dioxide to be released. There is probably also a chemical reaction occurring but there is a lot of debate about this.”

Let’s face it, it’s demonstrations like these that we still remember, not the number of electron orbits around a Lithium nucleus. Dr. Heath is probably not the first to hijack a web time-waster for educational use, but either way, let’s hear it for more showmanship in schools!

And in case you hadn’t seen the latest exemplar…