Staff and students from the School of Chemistry joined with scientists from across Scotland to illuminate and entertain over 3000 this weekend at Edinburgh Mela, Scotland???s biggest festival of world music and dance. 

The Science of Spice stall was funded by the Royal Society of Chemistry as part of their work to engage more people with chemistry.  On the stall thousands of adults and hundreds of children enjoyed colourful chromatography, playing with pigments and guessing the smells of some of our favourite flavours.

On the 2^nd of September members of the Spectroscopy in a Suitcase (SIAS) team took part in the BioCity event at the Perth High School, which involved delivering workshops on the IR and UV-Vis to 360+ pupils from 12 to 17 years of age.

We had a fantastic day opening our doors to the public on Saturday 26^th of September as part of the Cockburn Association Doors Open Day event across Edinburgh. The theme was food and drink for 2015, so we happily provided some chemistry-related food and drink activities!

Last week saw post-graduate students from the School of Chemistry hit the road to take Chemistry on Tour to remote and rural schools in Dumfries and Galloway.  Funded by the Royal Society of Chemistry, 7 PhD students ran activities with high school and primary classes at Wallace Hall Academy and Wallace Hall Primary in Thornhill, and at Kirkcudbright Academy and Kirkcudbright Primary School.   

We had two sold-out workshops at the Midlothian Science Festival last week. Lots and lots of fun was had dancing with ???photons??? and learning about what makes up white light. The ribbons were a hit and we had some wonderful ribbon dances! What is there not to love about ribbons!? At the end we played the parachute game with a true and false quiz to find out what we had learned about light.

Thanks to our volunteers and the Midlothian Science Festival organisers for such a great event.

Our Chemists were busy across the city for Explorathon 2015! From Edinburgh Zoo to the National Museums of Scotland they were found to be engaging with the public about chemistry! Giuditta Perversi talked about the symmetry and asymmetry found in the world, and her team had a selection of interactive crystallography activities beside the Rhino enclosure!

A team eight of enthusiastic PhD students from the School of Chemistry recently had an early start as they joined scientists from the Roslin Institute, Queen Margaret University,  Waterways in Scotland and Midlothian Council at the Glencorse Science Gala day, part of the Midlothian Science festival.

Rachel Fisher, a 2^nd year PhD student in the Jones group, tells us about her experience working on the International Year of Light ceilidh project:

I???m a Scientist, Get Me Out of Here is a public engagement initiative aimed to students from Year 5 to Year 13. It runs twice a year, completely on line. Every science teacher in the UK and their class can join for free.

PhD student Giuditta Perversi recently took part and gives us her thoughts on the process:

PhD student Chris Haggarty-Weir was recently nominated by one of his former students for the 2015 Malaria Social Media Awards in the Young Leaders category. He tells us about the awards and his research: