Well I guess it's been awhile since we've met, mate.
I guess my confession is it's been three years since my last Periodic Video.
As you know, I got a new job a number of years ago
and the job was to be the director of this
new development, this carbon-neutral laboratory that we're building in Nottingham.
And much of my time over the last three years has actually been devoted to
building and overseeing and actually "breathing to life" the project.
So this building is an opportunity for us to learn how to do science,
how to do chemistry in a fundamentally different way.
In a way that allows us to achieve the goals that we want to achieve
but without creating as much damage, without creating such a large carbon footprint.
Well, when you build a building, typically you build it out of things like concrete and steel
What many people don't understand about using concrete and steel
is that it costs a lot of energy to make the concrete and make the steel,
so what we've done is that we've built our building out of sustainable materials
quite a lot of wood, which you can see here
quite a lot of natural materials like clays,
and as you can see a grass roof on the top of our building.
We're now starting to put instruments inside.
There's no science going on in this building yet,
but I can show you some of the spaces and I can show you where my group will be,
where my office will be, just as a sneak preview, so that you can
whet your appetite and perhaps come back and look a little bit later.
Has been a huge amount of work, and it's not just my work
'cause clearly I'm not a builder.
We've had a team of sometimes up to a hundred people working here
and some of the best craftsmen that you could ever imagine.
So, um, this is my new office.
As you can see, it's not an office yet.
We've got furniture on the floor and the odd cardboard box.
Actually, my new role as director of this facility
allows me to focus more on my research.
So my research group is growing, and my research group will move into the building as well
and my research group are incredibly excited about moving into a building.
You know, how many people in the world have made a molecule and not considered
what the impact of the side-products or the waste products of their process are?
And, essentially, we've got to consider all aspects,
all of the atoms that go into our synthesis
and make sure that we know the end fate of the atoms at the end.
So as we go up these steps here, if you take a look up to the ceiling,
you'll see these really cool translucent photovoltaics
so they're actually generating current, and actually allowing some natural light to come through as well
so, we're generating electric and lighting at the same time.
So we're upstairs in the building now, on the research level,
all of our labs are upstairs.
I like this space though, you know, cos it allows you to come and
engage in the environment and think about what's going on out there and
and actually relax from your science for a few moments.
So actually what we're going to do with this space is put some chairs in and put some
whiteboard spaces so they can actually think and create about science
and actually use this space productively.
So the reason we're here now though is cos it's actually sort of the entranceway to my lab.
So the new lab that my group will move into in the next 3 or 4 weeks' time.
It's called Lab 3. (Laughs) It doesn't have a name as yet
because, as I said this project's not finished yet.
And we're rapidly on the way to getting there.
So this laboratory, I suppose on first inspection looks just like an old fashioned lab.
You know, we've got benches, along the walls we've got fume cupboards...
But if you take a look up towards the roof in this laboratory, you'll see that the
roof space is really quite expansive,
you can actually see all of the supply and extract ducts
you can see the delivery of all of the materials that you need to do your science.
Our fume cupboards look pretty much conventional.
And, in fact, they are quite conventional.
They're sort of more elaborate fume cupboards,
cos they give us side panels that we can move so that we can use safety features
which are not on all fume cupboards.
But I suppose the key innovation is actually in the plant rooms upstairs.
Because the plant which runs our fume cupboards
uses a much, much smaller amount of energy
so that we can provide the safe environment to do science
without costing too much in terms of energy, and therefore additional carbon.
It's probably one of the most efficient laboratories in the world.
It's the first of its type...
I'm not going to tell you about the technical aspects, because
it's a boring lecture which will last an hour!
It's very, very efficient.
It uses approximately a third of the energy of a traditional laboratory.
...after the 20 million pound building was completely destroyed by fire.
[Dr. License] The building wasn't complete, it wasn't a "building,"
it was still, in some senses a pile of wood,
and an accident happened.
I was actually on holiday in North Norfolk
in an area where there's no phone signal and no Internet,
hopefully on a "digital detox."
I managed to get a text message at about 11 o'clock in the evening
and yeah, the news was delivered.
And yeah, ruined the holiday and caused the dramatic change in
the following two years.
But you know, the building burned down
and less than two years later we've rebuilt it.
It's now complete; it now has all of its fire systems armed, protecting it.
And we're getting excited about moving in to do science.
So this is what's called our "winter garden."
It's an amazing space.
It's for us to have networking, idea generation,
small conferences.
If you come here, you can see the most amazing optical illusion,
which you'll never see on a camera.
So where the camera is, if you look over the edge of the balcony,
if you have a brain connected to the eye, or the lens,
your brain starts playing a trick with you, per se
because the glass wall to the right
and the wooden wall to the left are both on a really unusual incline.
So if you then focus on the stairway,
which is halfway along this room,
it looks like the whole thing's falling over!
It's really really fantastic; it makes people quite giddy and quite wobbly.
And in fact made our builders panic, they went away and got all sorts of levels and
surveyed the building to make sure that they'd built it straight.
So what we've done here in Nottingham
is we've run an experiment.
And that experiment has been truly, truly multidisciplinary.
It's involved chemists, it's involved architects, it's involved construction people,
it's involved people from industries that I would never have ever dreamt of.
And as I said, this really is an experiment.
It's a once in a lifetime opportunity to try and do science in a fundamentally better way.
...and Neil's gonna load it, and then we're gonna drop the hammer on it.
There you go, Neil.
We're gonna wear secondary goggles, so here's my safety goggles, which I'm gonna put on top.
Don't we look good?