Periodic table

The periodic table is a tabular arrangement of the chemical elements, ordered by their atomic number (number of protons), electron configurations, and recurring chemical properties. This ordering shows periodic trends, such as elements with similar behavior in the same column. It also shows four rectangular blocks with some approximately similar chemical properties. In general, within one row (period) the elements are metals on the lefthand side, and non-metals on the righthand side.

The rows of the table are called periods; the columns are called groups. Six groups (columns) have names as well as numbers: for example, group 17 elements are the halogens; and group 18, the noble gases. The periodic table can be used to derive relationships between the properties of the elements, and predict the properties of new elements yet to be discovered or synthesized. The periodic table provides a useful framework for analyzing chemical behavior, and is widely used in chemistry and other sciences.

The Periodic Table of Videos

The Periodic Table of Videos is a series of videos about chemical elements and the periodic table. They are published on YouTube and produced by Brady Haran, a former BBC video journalist, featuring Sir Martyn Poliakoff ("The Professor"), Peter Licence, Stephen Liddle, Debbie Kays, Neil Barnes, Sam Tang and others at the University of Nottingham.

Development

The project began recording on 9 June 2008 and the initial videos were completed on 17 July 2008. The collection includes videos, each just a few minutes long, for all 118 known elements with a video for each element, as well as many additional supplemental chemistry videos. The 118 element videos and introduction videos were all shot unscripted in June and July 2008.

Since the initial videos were completed in 2008 the team has been refining and uploading revised versions of the videos with new video and in higher resolutions. A key example of this revising is with the xenon video that was redone in honour of professor Neil Bartlett who died on August 5, 2008; Bartlett prepared one of the first xenon compounds, xenon hexafluoroplatinate.

University of Nottingham

The University of Nottingham is a public research university based in Nottingham, Nottinghamshire, England, United Kingdom. It was founded as University College Nottingham in 1881 and was granted a Royal Charter in 1948.

Nottingham's main campus, University Park, and teaching hospital (Queen's Medical Centre), is situated on the outskirts of the City of Nottingham, with a number of smaller campuses and sites located elsewhere in Nottinghamshire, Derby, Derbyshire, and Lincoln. Outside the United Kingdom, Nottingham has campuses in Semenyih, Malaysia and Ningbo, China. Nottingham is organised into five constituent faculties, within which there are more than 50 schools, departments, institutes and research centres. Nottingham has about 44,000 students and 9,000 staff and had a total income of £593.0 million in 2014/15, of which £119.4 million was from research grants and contracts.

Several of its subjects have been consistently ranked in the top ten, including economics, law and pharmacy. It is ranked 5th in the UK in terms of the number of students and 15th for the proportion of students who achieved AAB+ at A-level. The university is one of 12 "elite" institutions that accommodates the top achieving students in England. The 2014 High Fliers survey stated that Nottingham was the most targeted university by the UK's top employers between 2013-14. In 2012, Nottingham was ranked 13th in the world in terms of the number of alumni listed among CEOs of the Fortune Global 500. It is also ranked 2nd (joint with Oxford) in the 2012 Summer Olympics table of British medal winners. Moreover, Nottingham is the 9th largest European producer of entrepreneurs. In the 2011, and 2014 GreenMetric World University Rankings, Nottingham was the world's most sustainable campus.

University

A university (Latin: universitas, "a whole") is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which grants academic degrees in various subjects and typically provides undergraduate education and postgraduate education. The word "university" is derived from the Latin universitas magistrorum et scholarium, which roughly means "community of teachers and scholars."

History

Definition

The original Latin word "universitas" refers in general to "a number of persons associated into one body, a society, company, community, guild, corporation, etc." At the time of the emergence of urban town life and medieval guilds, specialised "associations of students and teachers with collective legal rights usually guaranteed by charters issued by princes, prelates, or the towns in which they were located" came to be denominated by this general term. Like other guilds, they were self-regulating and determined the qualifications of their members.

In modern usage the word has come to mean "An institution of higher education offering tuition in mainly non-vocational subjects and typically having the power to confer degrees," with the earlier emphasis on its corporate organization considered as applying historically to Medieval universities.

Brady Haran

Brady John Haran (born 18 June 1976) is an Australian independent film-maker and video journalist who is known for his educational videos and documentary films produced for BBC News and for his YouTube channels, such as Numberphile and Periodic Videos.

Career

Brady Haran studied journalism for a year before being hired by The Adelaide Advertiser. In 2002 he moved from Australia to Nottingham, United Kingdom. In Nottingham he worked for the BBC, began to work with film, and reported for East Midlands Today, BBC News Online and BBC radio stations.

In 2007, Haran worked as a filmmaker-in-residence for Nottingham Science City, as part of an agreement between the BBC and The University of Nottingham. His "Test Tube" project started with the idea of producing a documentary about scientists and their research, but he decided to upload his raw footage to YouTube; from that point "Periodic Videos" and "Sixty Symbols" were developed. Haran then left the BBC to work full-time making YouTube videos.