Masterclass in explaining science

I was helping a PhD student of mine with a talk yesterday. I was doing the usual stuff, saying you basically want one slide per minute of your talk, that it should tell a story, just make a few points clearly, not try and make too many points and confuse the audience, etc. I am not sure I am very good a giving talks myself, but hopefully I can do the basics. But Prof Martyn Poliakoff, a chemist at the University of Nottingham is a natural.

In this YouTube video he explains some recent work studying chemical reactions in the simplest system you can study, hydrogen.

He is just superb. He has the lot, good use of visual aids (fruit in his case), focusing on the simple idea he wants to get across, and an entertaining simile (about soup in this case) to add a light touch, before ending with an important message. And I learnt some interesting science in it. Incidentally, the experiment he describes works because of the Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle which is one of my favourite bits of physics. Enjoy.