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Here is The Prof and I deep undeground in an Australian gold mine.

There's 20 million tonnes of rock (and a few specks of gold) above our heads.

We enjoyed a tour of the mine, then made our own video about where gold comes from.

Professor Poliakoff had some students visit his office the other day (right).

They claimed to be fans of our Periodic Table of Videos, which we always like to hear.

They also had a confession.

In a flagrant and unauthorised breach of The Professor's image rights, they'd used his likeness on a friend's chemistry-themed birthday cake.

The professor agreed to waive his usual fees is exchange for a few photos of the cake itself! :)



I've never seen The Prof's hair look more delicious!

Click here for another brilliant likeness.

Our most recent film for The Periodic Table of Videos is about Ernest Rutherford - or his potato masher to be precise.

But it reminds me that I've now edited three videos with interesting tales about Rutherford.

Here they are:

Loved this email (and pictures) from a young Periodic Table of Videos viewer in Vietnam.

Dear periodic table of videos,

My name is Mark, I am one of your channel subscribers.

I am writing you this letter to inform you on some great news.

I started watching your videos only about 6 months ago when I was surfing the internet for some infos on aqua regia, since then I've been over every videos of yours, every single ones, including the previous videos too and some of Brady's other channels, because I found your videos astoundingly fascinating.

Most of your videos I found was unexpectedly useful when my classmates asked me about the stuff they didn't understand for example: gallium melting point, etc.

Ok, let's get to the main point.

I took the national Australian chemistry quiz held by RACI in July which spread over 15 nations (which Vietnam is where I'm from, Mark is just my preferred English name).

This test mainly aimed at basic chem learners (I'm only 13) so you get a bunch of infos before a question (so that you don't need to know much about chemistry at all).

I found it rather easy for some of the questions was on: year of chemistry, neodymium, buckminsterfullerene, 2010 Nobel prize, etc, which I already saw on your channel.

The result, I got 30 out of 30 and later received the award of excellence, which I'm very proud of since no one else in my school have it.

SO, IN OTHER WORDS, THANKS FOR GIVING ME THE BIGGEST BREAKTHROUGH IN MY EARLY CHEMISTRY CAREER.

I've sent you some pictures. 

Yours sincerely,
Mark

PS And yes! I wrote this, not my English teacher.

Filmed with a real-life enigma machine today for Numberphile.

Not every day you have one of THEM on the dining room table.

Videos about it soon!

I'm sometimes fascinated by automatically-generated advertising.

Some examples on recent films I've uploaded.

Here we see a video about standard weights (such as the official troy pound stored at the Royal Society). We get an advertisement for weight loss and dropping dress sizes!

A video featuring the famously coiffed Professor Poliakoff - we have a hair product that will "end frizz now."

And somewhat mysteriously, this video featuring spy satellites runs with an advertisement espousing the merits of Russian ladies!?

My new space series Deep Sky Videos is due to launch in January.

But production has already started. and today I shared a little preview.

The preview included this photo, which I think is amazing.

Courtesy of Nik Szymanek

The image is a five-minute exposure of the Andromeda Galaxy, taken by top astrophotographer Nik Szymanek.

But his photo has been blighted by FIVE satellites streaking across the field of view.

One of them streak "through" the core of Andromeda (though of course the satellite is in the foreground - by about 2.5 million light-years).

Here's the video in which we see numerous examples of satellites popping up in pictures.



Don't miss Deep Sky Videos when it starts.

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(Photo courtesy of Nik Szymanek)