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A seven-year-old science fan from the US is to realise her dream of meeting the team behind a series of chemistry videos which has become a YouTube sensation.
Second grader Adele Rouse, of Winston-Salem in North Carolina, will visit the
School of Chemistry at The University of Nottingham, home to the
Periodic Table of Videos, on Friday as part of a trip to the UK with her parents Kathryn and Jeremy Rouse.
Adele is the youngest fan of the videos ever to visit the Periodic Table of Videos team.
Cool experiments
Mum Kathryn said: “Adele was just four years old when she started watching the Periodic Table of Videos on YouTube and she enjoys watching them over and over. She’s a little knowledge sponge and loves learning all the chemistry facts and, of course, watching the cool experiments.
“Getting to meet the team behind the videos is such a big deal for Adele — it’s really the equivalent for her of getting to meet all the princesses at Disneyworld.”
Since its launch in 2008, the Periodic Table of Videos has attracted more than 430,000 subscribers and a total of more than 61 million views and offers a video about each chemical element on the periodic table, as well as others covering science news and interesting molecules.
The brainchild of video journalist Brady Haran and fronted by unlikely internet sensation Nottingham’s
Professor Martyn Poliakoff, the team has travelled the globe — including Everest basecamp and Sydney’s Bondi beach — to bring each of the elements to life.
Bite-size facts
Adele’s fascination with all things chemistry started while learning about the chemical elements as part of a home school pre-school programme and Kathryn stumbled across the Periodic Table of Videos while searching the internet for more material to satisfy her daughter’s growing curiosity.
The mix of exciting — and often explosive — experiments and bite-size easy to understand facts about each of the elements fuelled Adele’s passion for the subject and she also got to know and recognise the individual personalities from the University’s School of Chemistry who appear in the videos.
Adele and Kathryn are accompanying Jeremy, a number theorist and assistant professor at Wake Forest University in North Carolina, on a visit to the UK for a conference in Bristol.
Kathryn, a mathematics tutor at Wake Forest University, added: “When Adele learned we were coming to the UK she kept asking if we could go to Nottingham. At first I was confused and thought maybe it was the Robin Hood connection, but then I remembered The University of Nottingham logo which came up at the end of the chemistry videos.
“I figured the best thing I could do for women in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) was to encourage Adele’s interest in chemistry by emailing Professor Poliakoff and asking whether she could visit Nottingham to meet the team behind her favourite videos.”
Faithful followers
Adele will be at the University’s School of Chemistry on Friday July 4 where she will have the chance to chat to some of the personalities featured in the videos, see a live demonstration of her favourite experiment — an explosive mixture of water and potassium — and will be presented with her own white laboratory coat.
Dr Samantha Tang, a Public Awareness Scientist in the School of Chemistry and part of the Periodic Table of Videos team, said: “Meeting Adele, our youngest ever fan to visit us, will be a massive privilege for us.
“Chemistry is by its very nature both fascinating and exciting and knowing that the videos which we are making are helping to switch kids like Adele on to this amazing subject gives us a real buzz and makes it all worthwhile.”
During her trip to the UK, Adele and her parents are also hoping to visit the Science Museum in London, Stonehenge in Salisbury, Leeds Castle and Canterbury Cathedral in Kent as well as family friends in Wivenhoe in Essex.
Adele is not the first fan to drop in to visit the Periodic Table of Videos team — in 2012 10-year-old Edoardo Bandieri from Modena in Italy travelled to Nottingham to meet Professor Martyn Poliakoff and contributors from the Periodic Table of Video’s sister channels
Sixty Symbols and
Numberphile have also hosted visits from enthusiastic young followers.
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