• Question: How do you make all the explosions happen? What do you have to do to be able to be on Xmas lectures and do all the experiments?

    Asked by to Tom C, Saiful, Karl on 9 Jan 2017. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Saiful Islam

      Saiful Islam answered on 9 Jan 2017:

      There were four main explosive demos in my xmas lectures: exploding gun cotton shaped as a large candle; methane filled balloon; a hydrogen filled balloon; burning types of food (e.g. fat in pork scratchings).

      There were assistants at the Royal Institution (Natasha, Rosie, Catie) who were great at putting together and helping out with the demonstrations. There are short-term positions linked to the xmas lectures which are posted on the Ri website.

Comments

  • Photo: Natasha

    Natasha commented on :

    Hi! I’m Natasha and I worked as an assistant to the Christmas lectures contributing the the development of the demonstrations. If you saw me on screen it would be wandering on, blowing something up and wandering off again. Everyone does different things to get into Science Communication, I was lucky as this year’s lectures were on Energy which is something I studied a lot in my degree specialising in Materials Science. If you want to be responsible for these sorts of exciting demonstrations its a good idea to get hands on experience presenting and developing, and importantly dealing with Risk Assessments. I used to do this sort of work as an Explainer at the Science Museum.