periodicvideos-ABC-News

It's Australia Day.

Here's a compilation of reactions from The Periodic Table of Videos.

I don't think I've ever seen Professor Martyn Poliakoff smile so much.

Last week we visited Cleland Wildlife Park, in my home town for Adelaide, Australia.

The staff were kind enough to give the professor a short opportunity to hold one of their koalas, called Hank.

It was the fist time I've seen the professor stop talking about chemistry. He seemed captivated!

But don't worry, a few minutes later we retreated to a nearby eucalyptus tree and The Prof made this video about the chemistry of koalas (or koala bears, as he couldn't help calling them!)

Earlier today I blogged about periodicvideos reaching its 50,000th subscriber.



I now have two new pieces of news.



First, we've posted a video to mark the milestone.



It's a song by rapper and science communicator Oort Kuiper (aka Jon Chase) - but using some of our own video clips.



Check it out:







Also, I sent a message to the 50,000th subscriber - and heard back from him.



Initially he thought my message was a hoax (I don't blame him with the amount of spam flying around YouTube!)



The chap - who would prefer to remain nameless - is originally from the town of Zadar in Croatia.



He wrote: "I had no idea this was going to be the 50,000th subscription, and I wanted to subscribe long time ago, but never really cared about the whole concept of subscription because I periodically watch the channels I like, like periodicvideos.



"Well, this is a rather great honour for a Youtuber, especially because your channel is one of the best ones around.



"Though I'm not too active on Youtube cause there's not much time for making the videos I'd like, it's been more than 5 years that I run a blog (endimion17.blog.hr), mainly discussing pseudoscience from a healthy critical thinking point of view, presenting the local web population with some cool things from amateur astronomy and chemistry, and occasionally a rant or two on criminal."



I can't vouch for the blog as I don't understand the language, but here it is.



Our mysterious number 50,000 also had plenty of suggestions for future videos.



He wrote: "It would be great to make few videos of really rare sights, like solid oxygen, solid and liquid ozone (yeah, I know it's dangerous), glowing of condensed radon, the glow of metallic radium, etc.



"We've all been reading about stuff like that from the textbooks, but there are no photos or videos around."

I'm just back from a brief but successful trip to Dublin, in Ireland.

The main reason was to give a public talk at the Science Gallery.

It was about making science films and, as always, I enjoyed the opportunity to discuss my work.

I also checked out the gallery's excellent "Elements" exhibition, which runs until September 23.

It was really good and any science buff will love it. Worth a cheap flight to Dublin if you can afford it!!!

I was joined on the trip by two of our Irish science stars - Phil Moriarty from Sixty Symbols and Darren Walsh from periodicvideos.

The pair helped me out with a few films we'll be posting in the coming weeks.

Professor Moriarty did three (or "tree", as he would say in his Irish lilt).

We discussed Erwin Schrödinger at the lecture theatre bearing his name at Trinity College.

We also discussed Ireland's only science Nobel Prize winner - Edwin Walton.

And of course we did a video about Guinness, the famous Irish drink which is jam-packed with interesting science stuff.

Dr Walsh joined me at the Science Gallery exhibit I mentioned above, and we'll have some videos coming soon about periodic tables and elements.

They should be fun and will include a few little "gimmicks" that I think chemistry fans will love, including a really cool platinum sample and a periodic table in Braille!

PS: We didn't drink the Guinness - neither Professor Moriarty or I are particularly fond of it!

It occurs to me that we didn't do anything to mark the 4th of July.

So I thought I'd share this older video I filmed during a visit to the US a while back (it includes a pledge of allegiance, which caused plenty of chat in the YouTube comments section).



And The Prof answering questions from US students.