For the past eight years I have been involved with colleagues from the Department of Chemistry in the active promotion of public understanding of science (particularly chemistry) to schools, community groups, and other organisations throughout Scotland and northern England. Visits have included schools and community centres in Fife, East Kilbride, Coatbridge, Orkney, Shetland, Island of Mull, Oban, Penrith, Newcastle, Manchester, and the annual Edinburgh International Science Festival. The aims of these activities include:

(i) to increase people's awareness of the importance of chemistry,

(ii) to show that chemistry manifests itself in areas of everyday life ranging through cooking to fabrics to computer chips,

(iii) to explain the process of scientific methodology and attempt to convey the excitement of the research process.

Key features of these activities are the demonstrations and, where possible, the opportunity for people to take part in "hands-on" activities. These activities allow people to experience science at first hand in an informal environment, and emphasise the connections with our everyday lives. The workshops allow people to use their own powers of reasoning to make deductions on the basis of experiment and observation, and go some way to demonstrating the process of scientific methodology.

Another key feature of these activities is that they are presented by real scientists - academic and technical staff, postgraduate students - and so people have the opportunity to meet the people who do the research and discover for themselves that we do not conform to some of the less appealing stereotypes that are sometimes portrayed in films and in the media. It also gives people a chance to ask us questions that may often be very wide-ranging and very astute. Often the questions give insight into how non-scientists may perceive a particular concept, and so in turn make us think more carefully about how best to present this concept in future.

More details of these activities can be found at www.chem.ed.ac.uk/chemcon. With my colleagues Drs Lesley Yellowlees and Elizabeth Stevenson, we recently completed a project funded by the EPSRC as part of its Partnerships for Public Understanding Scheme. The final report for this project can be downloaded as a Word97 file or an Acrobat pdf file.

I was recently awarded the "Bringing Science to Society" prize sponsored by the Royal Society of Chemistry and the Royal Institution. This was presented by Her Majesty The Queen at the 200^th anniversary celebration of the Royal Institution.

Why is public understanding of science important?

An increased public understanding of science is important for the following reasons:

(i) a significant proportion of public money is spent on the science budget and so people have a right to know how and why the money is being spent.

(ii) to inform people and particularly those who have influence, e.g. politicians, company directors, the media, about the benefits that fundamental and applied science bring to our economy, quality of life, and health. This is particularly true of our own discipline, chemistry, which is often associated with pollution and warfare, whereas in fact beneficial activities such as drug development, discovery of new materials, and environmental monitoring and protection receive much less publicity.

(iii) to allow people to be more critical in making judgements on scientific matters, e.g. what is the evidence, how much weight should be given to it, what are the relative risks of taking a particular course of action?

(iv) to counteract misconceptions and educate the media in accurate and responsible reporting of scientific issues.

(v) to educate, excite, and enthuse schoolchildren by the effective presentation of science, i.e. inspire the scientists of tomorrow and show that science is relevant to everybody.

Mail to C.R.Pulham@ed.ac.uk