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I've been pleasantly surprised by the response to our Numberphile video about the Curta calculator.

Writer Alex Bellos bought one on ebay some time ago and demonstrated it for our video.



The video has been besieged by comments from people expressing a desire to own one.

And this week I heard from a viewer who himself bought one on ebay - Razz70.

He even sent us a picture - thank you.

The brown paper in Numberphile is often a topic of conversation - and I even wrote a blog to explain its use.

But I've now accumulated quite a few pieces, and rather than throw them all away I thought I might auction a few for charity!?

First is the Nepal Flag paper, drawn by Dr James Grime using the exact wording from Nepal's constitution.

THE ORIGINAL IS AVAILABLE ON EBAY (auction ends October 23).

Proceeds will go the Nottinghamshire Hospice, for which Mrs Numberphile is currently fundraising!

Today is Ada Lovelace Day - a celebration of women in science.

We've marked it with a film on Deep Sky Videos from astronomer Dr Meghan Gray.

Meghan spoke about Beatrice Tinsley, a pioneer in her chosen field of galaxy evolution.



I've had a quick scan through the archives on other projects and found a few more videos which seem appropriate to share today.

Dr Gray on the now notorious "Girl Thing" video...



Engineer and balloonist Dr Janet Folkes was tragically taken from us this year.



Janet breaks a world record.


A day in the life of an astrophysicist.



Not many people have an element named after them!



Rosalind Franklin - another great scientist who died too soon.

Rather frustratingly (and mysteriously) the latest Numberphile video was not "delivered" to all our YouTube subscribers.

The video is a guest appearance by fellow YouTuber and number lover, ViHart.

She rolls a Yahtzee in her own inimitable style - using tetrahedral dice.

If you like the video and want to help us right this technological wrong, please share the video with your like-minded friends via email, Facebook, Twitter, Google-Plus or whatever else you use!?

Today I received a package in the post from Nottingham Trent University.

They've produced a series of postcards based on the "artwork" in the My Favourite Scientist videos.



Each card features a masterpiece from a film from the series (though not all films are included).

They seem to be in a "collect-the-set" format, which appeals to the sports/Star Wars card collector in me!

I've included photos of the cards below and a link to the relevant video below each one.

Feynman

Einstein

Rubenstein

Attenborough

Franklin

Mendel

Darwin

Jarrett

This is what the back of the cards look like, which includes a QR code link toe the relevant video too!


As a point of clarification, My Favourite Scientist is a collaboration with Nottingham Trent University.

This not the same as The University of Nottingham, with whom I collaborate on projects such as Sixty Symbols and Periodic Table of Videos.

Those two projects also have promotional cards we use from time to time - see below.

Sixty Symbols

Periodic Table of Videos

PS: My father is an accomplished artist and may well be mortified if he ever sees this blogpost!

This caracicature of the periodicvideos team has been sent by Jon Harsem, a Norwegian viewer who lives in Sydney.

I seem to have ended up looking like Sloth from The Goonies!

Anyways, below is the email from Jon who sent the picture in.

And here is a link to the image on Flickr.

And here are some more caricatures.

JON'S EMAIL WHICH ACCOMPANIED THE IMAGE:

Brought to you by the not-really-too-much-time-department - it's a bit rough but functional =).

My apologies to Profs Stockman, Walsh; Moses - I'll add them in due course but perhaps will start with some caricatures first - lets see where my mood takes me, I recon Prof Moriarty + guitar + rocking pose is an epic picture waiting to happen =).

I haven't watched *any* TV for the last three weeks but rather have your Youtube videos running - and given the number of them (started with periodic videos but I am more of a physics-kinda-guy) I doubt I'll be stopping soon.

Thanks also to Ed Copeland for being the first person to explain the extra-dimensional universe to me using a cadbury creme egg in a way that I (kind of) got - the result being that I have started watching Stanford's Quantum mechanics course on iTunes U.

A bit of a meta-note but the reason all of this works so well is that these guys are human, Ed Copeland's amazement seeing the particle detector at CERN was real, obviously real.

James' dismay about his Phd funding was heart-wrenching and the video conveyed that. So in some ways you manage not only to educate, which I guess is your primary goal, but also to ground your characters - which is your achievement as the journalist - well played.

Whatever the university is paying (if anything) I wouldn't hesitate to say it's not enough.

For your viewer statistics - 39 year old Norwegian living in Sydney =)

Hi everyone.

Professor Poliakoff

I will be hosting a Google Hangout with various professors who appear in my assorted science videos.

This will include Professor Martyn Poliakoff, Professor Ed Copeland, Professor Michael Merrifield and Professor Philip Moriarty.

It's a chance to see them live (on your screens) and ask them whatever you like... Nice change from me asking all the questions, hey?

It will be on December 3, 2012 at 5pm in the UK (noon, Eastern Standard Time for those in the US).

It will be hosted HERE on the periodicvideos Google+ page.

AND BROADCAST ON THE PERIODICVIDEOS YOUTUBE PAGE.

Professor Moriart

I hope things will run smoothly and people will be asking live questions.

But just in case things get glitchy, you can leave any suggesting talking points here on the blog!

#MeetProfessors