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what is the best book for non chemists
to get a basic understanding of
chemistry and what is your favorite
fiction book I have no idea which book
to recommend to you because books like
teachers some people get on really well
with one teacher
some people prefer a different teacher
so it's which author you relate to I
very much like the book by Primo Lavery
called the periodic table it may not
suit everybody
I don't read very much fiction and if I
do read fiction I usually only read it
once what's the last fiction book you
read the last fiction book I read was by
Owen Matthews
I've forgotten its title it's a murder
mystery set in a Russian town in the
1919 50s when the h-bomb was being
constructed there in your videos we
often see experiments fail but in a
factory the same chemical reaction will
be flawlessly executed with perfect
predictability why when we do
experiments we're doing them for the
first time at least for us so there are
lots of things we don't know they were
meant to put it off if you're building a
chemical factory you will put in a lot
of chemical engineering you will know
all of the aspects of the reaction and
you've calculated the rates of reactions
and so on so you've done the experiments
hundreds of times and you've got it
really to work working with so many
different chemicals through the years
I'm sure you've had a few scares but was
there ever an incident when you were
genuinely fearful for your life no I
think chemists have to work safely
I suppose the scariest
incident they had was when I was a
student it's doing my doctorate and I
put five hundred pounds per square inch
pressure of hydrogen gas by mistake into
a glass bulb and the bulb exploded and
bits of glass were found all over my
hair but fortunately I wasn't injured at
all we were in safety specs in those
days people who wore glasses were not
given safety glasses so I actually glued
some stud pieces onto one of my pairs of
glasses after that what is your best
advice in teaching chemistry that will
help me become an even better teacher
first of all let me say that when I talk
to professional chemists and ask them
why did you become a chemist they nearly
always say because I had an
inspirational chemistry teacher and I
had a great teacher called Tony Roberts
I am Tony Roberts I taught Martin
chemistry 50 years ago I behaved badly
in his class but he still inspired me so
I think the most important thing for any
sort of teaching is enthusiasm if you
find the subject boring heaven helped
the pupils so I think you've got to
convey the idea that you think the work
is interesting and you like it I was
once lecturing to students about
something I thought was really boring
substitution in octahedral cobalt
complexes the whole class was silent and
I suddenly thought gosh they think it's
interesting and I worked myself up into
such the state of excitement that I
couldn't do anything for the rest of the
morning do you professor Polyakov what
is your favorite cheese I don't like
blue cheese very much but I like most
other cheese's
I once published a paper with my
colleague George Davidson analyzing
cheese
in fact analyzing low-fat cheese and
comparing with normal cheese I was so
embarrassed that I published the paper
with the word cheese in the title that I
didn't put it in my CV for many many
years well I thought it was not very
didn't sound very scientific what will
you do when you retire one can never
foresee the future but I'm not planning
to retire immediately but who knows
what's going to happen to one in the
future
how many periodic table ties do you have
I'm not sure because I have two
collections one at home and one here at
the University and the University and
the ties sometimes travel between the
two I think it's more than a dozen I
rarely wear a tie without the periodic
table on it I've now even gone a really
dark one that is suitable for funerals
you can't really see the elements very
well but I know they're there I have a
theory which might amuse some of you
that wearing a tie may help mitigate
global warming because you see when you
have a tie it constrains your collar and
your neck so hot air gets trapped in
your shirt so you feel warmer so you can
turn the heating down so if you wear a
tie less co2 it's discharged in the
atmosphere so save the planet and wear a
tie how do you relax in your free time
sleep you go to the movies a lot don't
you
so I go to well my wife is very keen on
cinema so we go quite a bit to the
cinema and you probably know that my
brother is a movie director and writer
you can buy his DVDs on Amazon so I do
enjoy going to cinema and my mother was
an actor
though she didn't perform very much but
there is a big tradition of performing
in our family is it true that you
sometimes leave when you're bored and go
and work out in the corridor though and
leave your wife to watch on our own yes
the cinema has very good Wi-Fi and so if
the film bores me or frightens me I go
out and work on my computer a lot of
people asked about this what advances in
chemistry will be most important for
preventing or mitigating climate change
besides wearing ties I think the
important thing is to find ways of
providing energy without generating co2
or large amounts of co2 it is not just a
question of chemistry because it
involves a lot of engineering the
chemistry may be the underlying
principle but getting it to work on a
large scale is definitely engineering so
engineers and chemists have to work
together the really important things
that need to be done is to learn how to
harness the energy from the Sun really
efficiently for example new catalysts to
split water into hydrogen and oxygen
using sunlight then you can burn the
hydrogen to fuel cars and other sorts of
transport then there is the question of
batteries so you can store electrical
energy that you have generated with
photocells
making cheaper photocells that lasts
longer that use all of the spectrum of
the light from the Sun my hope is that
chemists are going to succeed if they
don't we'll all fry as the temperature
just goes up and up in the Earth's
atmosphere we had so many questions
about this I guess I better ask how do
you maintain your majestic hair how do
you prepare it what's your hair regime
so my hair is what I was born with and I
don't do very much apart from
occasionally brushing it I haven't been
to a barber
since 1967 my wife cuts my hair
occasionally when she's persuaded me
that it looks totally ridiculous
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you