Visitors join our team of chemists to discover how logic, computers and imagination are used to solve the puzzles of chemistry Public Engagement Development Scholars Ellie Tanaka and Nikola Zotev recently ran a drop-in session at the Edinburgh International Science Festival. Here they tell us about how the event went. This year our fantastic team of postgraduate students and staff welcomed more than 2000 visitors to our drop-in activity at the National Museum of Scotland over the course of five days. Our aim was to help the public to discover the synergy between abstract thinking and experimental work and show how computers are helping chemists in many aspects of our research nowadays. During the event, the visitors had the chance to dive into the world of molecular dynamics (MD) simulations through an engine oil simulation video from the Philip Camp group and an interactive MD simulation game by Nikola Zotev from the Adam Kirrander group. One of our highlights, a virtual reality (VR) tour designed by Dr Jordi Juárez-Jiménez from the Julien Michel group, was also very popular in which the visitors navigated themselves inside a protein molecule. On the other hand, visitors tested their abstract thoughts by building their own molecules, writing words using the elements of the periodic table, and trying out some simple oil/water experiments to create a “galaxy in a bottle”. In addition to that, visitors voted for the winner of our image competition! We hope the hands-on and game-like nature of our activities not only challenged the visitors’ creativity and imagination but also inspired them in pursuing the wonders of chemistry and the importance of the research happening at the University of Edinburgh. Publication date 01 May, 2019
