Our Blog

A significant number of chemists and chemistry students are not in it for the money …. but in it for the explosions (and I am no exception). A secret hankering to be a fireworks engineer bubbles to the surface (or should that be ‘explodes into the atmosphere’?) every November 5th. Well, it’s time for some […]

The centre piece of a Bonfire Night party is, of course, the bonfire:  setting fire to Guy Fawkes’s effigy at the start, warming chilly hands during the evening and toasting marshmallows on the embers at the end.  A bonfire is a wonderful amalgamation of biology, chemistry and physics.  This blog looks at a little of […]

Many of the government’s recent changes in education policy have been greeted with opposition. The coalition’s policy on Free Schools, for example, is strongly opposed by the NASUWT  – and the proposal to replace GCSEs with the English Baccalaureate has already been dropped due to criticism by teachers and unions. Now, proposed changes to the […]

Today the exams regulator Ofqual has confirmed a list of changes it is making to GCSEs, in what it calls “the biggest shake-up of exams in England for a generation”. The headlines have been grabbed by a new grading system which will use numbers instead of letters and the announcement that coursework is being scrapped […]

When it comes to love, once we get into the literature of the seventeenth and eighteenth century we have a lot more scope for doing a little picking and choosing… For drama, your first stop is going to be Shakespeare, and remember, if you can watch performances of plays such as Romeo and Juliet, Othello, […]

In 1605 a man called Guido (Guy) Fawkes, along with Robert Catesby, John Wright, Thomas Percy and Thomas Winter, plotted to blow up the Houses of Parliament. In 1603 Elizabeth I died and the English Crown had gone to the Scottish King James VI. He had been the King of Scotland for 36 years when […]

Every 31st October we celebrate the night of Halloween. Pumpkins are carved into jack-o-lanterns, white sheets are ripped in half and turned into ghost costumes, and children go trick-or-treating. These activities are a very modern take on a festival steeped in history. Halloween has its earliest originals in Celtic times, and began life as a […]

Halloween is coming and we are all getting dressed up! Halloween is the time of parties and trick or treating. The witches and wizards and zombies and ghosts all come out and wander our streets asking for sweets and chocolate! Halloween is a time that encourages people, kids and adults alike, to dress up and […]

Halloween is coming and suddenly the streets will be full of ghosts and ghouls and witches and zombies. We will watch scary films. We will scare each other. We will go trick or treating. It is a time when suddenly it is fun to be scared! Why? When we are scared, our bodies prepare themselves […]

We’ve all been there; we have all “hit a brick wall”. We simply don’t understand, and ask ourselves: how is it done, how does it work? Often, when it comes to Maths, when we reach that point, we blame ourselves; we think of ourselves as “dumb,” sometimes so much so that we are scared to […]