we're at the Royal Institution where
Michael Faraday used to give lectures
and in the very lecture theatre and in a
few minutes
Brady and I are going to give a lecture
it's the first time that two people have
given one of these posh Friday evening
lectures at the same time a double act
so it's quite an experiment but before
we start there's something I really want
to show you because I think you'll be
interested
in my pocket I've got this and this is a
real Nobel Prize medal it's a real Nobel
Prize medal made of gold it's the medal
that was won by my colleague at the
Royal Society to pull nurse the
president and I borrowed it for this
lecture
I think Brady was hoping that I'd be
mugged on the way so that he could have
a good story scientist loses Nobel Prize
so don't broadcast this till we get back
the question that I think you'll all be
wanting to know is how much does it
weigh what is the gold worth and so just
to answer your question I brought a
balance and that's also in my pocket
it's quite a nice little balance so here
goes
weighing a Nobel Prize and you can see I
can't read it from here but it's about a
hundred and seventy three grams now
that's quite a lot of gold and I don't
know how pure it is it may be 22 carats
which is 11 means that it's 20 to 24
made out of pure gold it might be
cheaper it might be eighteen or nine
carat gold but you can work it up
yourself how much it might be worth
actually but don't tell anybody this is
lighter than the gold medal that I won
two years ago from the Royal Society
so my gold medals bigger than his was
hard to convince their owners to lend
you his Nobel Prize no I had no
difficulty I was really surprised and so
he was very happy for me to borrow it
and be quite interesting to see how the
audience reacts and what they think of
the Nobel Prize and I should show you
the other side as well it's rather nice
and it has a very nice red leather case
but I haven't brought that because it
doesn't fit in my pocket but I hope you
arrange stayed big
you may not see one again