Edinburgh Science Festival 2024 - There’s nothing boring about boron!

“Stop by and explore how our chemists are taming boron for future applications including medicines, chemical manufacturing and even in smart materials such as OLED (organic light emitting diodes) devices. Join us for hands on activities suitable for all ages and help put boron to work!”

This was the promise to fill a rainy few days during the Edinburgh Science Festival 2024, and the feedback from those that came along was overwhelmingly positive! Members of the Boron: Beyond the Reagent team entertained and educated over 800 members of the public at the National Museum of Scotland drop in event space. Activities were aimed at children and families with a very real link to the cutting edge science being carried out as part of the Boron research programme.

Visitors were able to experience what it is like to work inside a glove box and get up close to some porous materials and find out about their potential uses. Our UV activities including fluorescent art and UV active beads were a firm favourite with all that visited the stand! Blue sky thinking was also on display from some of our younger visitors when designing and making new molecules using computational chemistry software and molymod models.

“My experience was very inspiring. Kids are able to push the limits of science in such interesting ways! I definitely left the festival with some exiting new ideas.”
Dr Lia Sotorrios, PDRA at Manchester

All of the researchers involved thoroughly enjoyed the experience and a huge thanks goes out to them for all of their time and effort both on the day and in the lead up to the event. Well done Lia, Masha, Daniela and Anna! Thanks also go to Emily Hanover (Zysman-Colman group, St Andrews) and Jenny Gracie (Widening Participation and Outreach Officer, School of Chemistry, Edinburgh).