[Music]
what is a chemical reaction that you
have not seen but you would like to do I
think that most chemical reactions are
really exciting and particularly when
they've filmed by Brady who can do
things very close up in slow motion and
things like that and over the last
nearly 12 years with periodic videos
there are all sorts of reactions that I
thought were a bit boring which have
turned out to be really beautiful so
this is actually much better than I
intended because I was going to make it
purple and make it go clear and here you
can see I'm pouring in the purple
solution and it's disappearing and if
you ask most chemists the things that
really turn them on about chemistry is
seeing colored precipitates forming
color changes all sorts of reactions
even the occasional explosion what is
your career greatest achievement to
survive till my age I'm also quite proud
that I've worked in lots of different
areas of chemistry this probably means
that I'm not as famous as if I had
stayed as a specialist in one particular
area but it's been such fun exploring so
many different areas if you helped
discover the next super-heavy element
and you were asked to name it what would
you call it
I've been asked once or twice by brady
when new elements have been discovered i
quite liked the name planck him after
max planck but i must say that i don't
get quite as excited about naming of
elements for some other people though I
do think it was a really good choice to
name element 118 after URI again is
young how does it feel to be or do you
consider yourself to be an Internet
YouTube celebrity I think if I'm a
celebrity at all I'm a fairly minor one
so it means that I can go
public places without being mobbed by
many people I occasionally meet fans and
that's really quite fun but some of the
people who appear as scientists on
television mainstream television cannot
go into a restaurant or bar without
hundreds of people coming around them
asking for autographs and other things
you don't have that problem not yet
what is your personal hobby do you like
sports cars luxury watches the answer is
I don't like the sports cars I've had
the same brand of car for nearly 40
years more than 40 years and the current
one is blue and what kind of car is it
it's a folks Bergen Passat and I'm
slightly ashamed now because it has a
diesel engine that has emission levels
that are higher but since most weeks I
walk considerably further than I drive I
don't think that this is a serious
environmental problem and you can see I
have a pretty standard watch the problem
is that digital watches which i think
are much better than analog ones and
becoming unfashionable now it's quite
difficult to find them now and I suppose
my hobby is buying books and reading
them a lot of people have asked I know
you answered this before but maybe it's
changed do you have a favorite element
and a question that we haven't heard
before
do you have an unfavorite element a most
disliked element so well let me answer
firs I don't have a most disliked
element what's extraordinary is I used
to think that lots of elements were
boring there every time we make a video
about an element even one that I thought
was boring I suddenly find it's really
much more interesting than I thought so
I don't think now they're any boring
elements at all even the one that's
called boron and as you know my
colleague debbie is really in love with
it
someone's even written a song saying
Debbie loves boron and I still think my
favorite element is sodium because as
you may have heard me explain my mother
was called inna i na and there's a
little girl she shortened her name - na
and my children used to call her now as
their grandmother so every time I see a
chemical formula with sodium in it na I
feel a warm motherly feeling so we have
what is called a straight line setup
this is because we can't have boron in
an oxygen
pour on in especially in wet oxygen
because it'll react with it and we want
to keep our our compound as nice and
pure as possible so my students can use
it for their reactions