They can be seen here:

www.youtube.com/user/tdacampaign

The TDA seems to have had a lot more money to throw at the production side, and as matt_st says the ICE has concentrated on producing support materials. For sheer spectacle the TDA videos are obviously more fun to watch and more likely to enthuse teachers and school students alike.

Is this the thread to mention that two of your Podcasts on ITunes will not download to my phone?

Could it be the file format

Hmm, possibly

I agree – there are more attention grabbing chemical experiments (Don’t do these at home):

1) Comparative reactivity of metallic Lithium, Sodium, and Potassium when dropped into water.

2) The thermite reaction. Starting off by just burning magnesium in air is fairly spectacular.

3) Light a balloon full of hydrogen with a spill. Now do the same with one filled with a stoichiometric ratio of hydrogen and oxygen.

4) Ignite a small pile of ammonium dichromate.

5) Fun with nitrogen tri-iodide

6) A clock reaction

7) Catalysis of sugar cube combustion with cigarette ash

Bioluminescence

9) Production of mercury by heating cinnabar

10)Production of polyurethane expanding foam (binary liquid)

11) Make some ice-cream with liquid nitrogen

12) Demonstrate one of the many anomalous natures of water by floating an ice cube in liquid water, then watching (say) solid dodecane sink in dodecane.

13) Have some (possibly) colourless solutions, which when mixed produce funky coloured precipitates/colloids. Possibly do the production of Prussian blue (and how that kicked off colour chemistry)

14) Demonstrate the different flame colours generated by different salts: explain the use of sodium in street lamps and the discovery of helium

15) Make some hydrogen sulfide.

16) Melt some sulfur and show how rubbery the allotropic (this is a simplification) form is compared to crystals. Look at the allotropes of carbon.

17) In contrast to hydrogen sulfide, make one or several esters.

18) Sniff some 88 ammonia

19) Drip water onto calcium carbide to produce acetylene, then light the acetylene. If possible, find an old lamp that used this.

20) Demonstrate limelight

21) Try and dissolve polystyrene in water, then dissolve it in acetone.

So a few bangs, and few smells, and a few things to trigger intellectual curiosity. I’ve probably missed oodles more. The only ones I haven’t done of the above are numbers 10,11 and 21.

Even more fun is magnesium ribbon.

Insert into L and N holes in a switched socket outlet and switch on (with a broomstick).

Instant magnesium flare.

I should add “do not try this at home” but unfortunately I did.

In the commercial world they are used to lock competitors out of markets and increase the costs for all of us.

And the problem for everyone is that the companies making the big bucks have the influence with the politicians – so the problem will only be getting worse.

If you have a minute, look up ‘ACTA copyright’ in google.

I’ll be sharing the feedback with colleagues tomorrow and, in the meantime, if anybody wants to re-mix/edit the videos, I’d be keen to see the end product.

A little background on the videos: They are a resource for teachers, complete with supporting resource/instruction sheets and designed to help make school science lessons more interesting and exciting for students.

We’ve had a really, really positive reaction from the teaching world and some coverage on the Guardian’s Education website and as part of a package on BBC Breakfast TV.

I’ll keep an eye on this thread and am keen to learn any further feedback.

For exciting whizzbangs, my colleagues and I looked to our own experiments. I’ve yet to find anything better than a large chunk of sodium, enclosed in something well-perforated and weighty, dropped into a body of water. Old Victorian gym-room basins could be reduced to rubble.

If…

Reminds me of my Chemistry A level pract exam, 2.55hrs in and I poured my result down the sink by accident.

Bugger eh?

I’ve used your links to download all ten and then slide forward passed the intro and just watch the experiment.

Sorry, montyfood but that music is naff.

I’m surprised they didn’t make them in black & white to really complete the retro look.

I supposed they’ll say these are intended for teachers to learn how to do experiments so they don’t need to be ‘sexy’.

Would I be right in thinking that it would be sterile and non-toxic?

I clicked on the video link, and the video opened in a new tab, using the Mplayer plug-in. It took a few seconds to buffer up properly, and then started.

It’s a nasty format (WMV), but actually turned out more convenient than horrible embedded Flash. I would have preferred Theora+Vorbis, but this is OK.

So… that’s another lost customer.

FAIL.

They seem feasible even on the support of the system there.

The outcome will be pretty important.

Other free software easily clips out the annoying intro, after which I could pop the thing over to YouTube and embed it in my blog if I were so inclined – and if the creators had made it clear that I wouldn’t be sued for doing so.

Of course, that highlights the legitimacy of your main complaint, which is that the creators have made sharing these videos much more difficult than they had to.

I think Ninja’s catalogue is about as far away from genuine tacky library music as you can get & kudos to the white coats for getting them on board.