Scavenging for elements
Gemma Scotney CChem ran a periodic table scavenge as part of this year’s Whitstable Fun Palace, to teach people about the elements all around them.
As a chemist with over ten years’ experience in the pharmaceutical industry and a similar length of membership with the Royal Society of Chemistry, I have been heavily involved in outreach activities, both through my work and independently.
I got involved in Whitstable Museum of Fun two years ago, when I led a rocket launching activity at the Whitstable Umbrella Centre. This year, on Sunday 8 October, I worked with the Horsebridge Arts Centre in Whitstable, to build a giant periodic table in the top floor performance space.
The idea was to involve the public in building the periodic table, using physical items that either contained or represented the elements in question. For the elements where this wasn’t possible, we used art to represent them, supported by local artists.
In the days leading up to the event, we encouraged the local community to be element hunters, suggesting lists of items for people to bring, in categories such as food, bathroom chemicals, old gadgets and craft materials.
We wanted to broaden the community’s understanding of what the periodic table represents, and to show that everything around us is made of these building blocks.
Treasure trove
The performance space housed a treasure trove of activities to teach visitors about the periodic table, from arts and crafts, to scavenging and sorting from our periodic table bucket. We even had some elemental haiku!
By the time the clocks struck eleven we had a queue of participants coming through the doors armed with pots of seaweed, shells and sea water, not to mention various other scavenged products from their homes.
The beach items formed an activity where visitors could explore what our coastline is made of. Seawater contains the elements sodium, chlorine, hydrogen and oxygen, and seaweed contains iodine. Visitors were able to put the sand under mini microscopes and learn about its structure, which is similar to glass, and its elemental make-up, which is mainly silicon. Finally, we used acid reactions involving lemon juice to demonstrate that the shells were made up of calcium, carbon and oxygen.
People young and old participated in sorting through the giant buckets of scavenged items, using discussion, books, and even the Royal Society of Chemistry periodic table app, to find out what they were made of, and where they fit into the periodic table.
We investigated everything from helium in balloons to niobium and tantalum – present in mobile phones, to chromium and manganese – present in yeast and tea. Visitors also got to learn what elements are present in their body so they could be a human real-life exhibit!
For the less readily available materials, Fran Baur from screen-printing company Fable & Base was on hand to take folks though screen printing of radioactive elements, and Nicola Priest, who leads regular art workshops at the Horsebridge, provided crafting ideas and tools to enable people to represent other elements through art. Some visitors even designed their own elements.
The Fun Palace ran non-stop until 3pm, with over 230 people participating in the Horsebridge event alone.
The event was kindly sponsored by the RSC Kent Local Section, whose donated pens and periodic table posters were warmly received by visitors young and old. Some enthusiastic participants even got to take away copies of the Simon Mayo Book Itch – to learn more about element hunters.
Thanks go to Hannah Wenn, Manager at the Horsebridge, and volunteers Isabella Savin, Daniela Savin, Issie Bruton and Laila Baur-Harrison for supporting the event on the day.
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