Month: October 2015

#RealTimeChem Week 2015 Awards and Cook Off prize winners

Posted on by doctorgalactic

Hi RealTimeChemists,

Once again I have to say a massive thank you every single chemist out there who took part in #RealTimeChem week. This community only exists because of you and it’s always great fun to witness the massive variety of chemists taking part from all over the world. It was nice to see tweet not just from regulars, but also a lot of newcomers. Welcome to #RealTimeChem I hope you enjoy your stay.

While the week event is over for another year, don’t forget that #RealTimeChem is a 24/7 project, so feel free to keep sharing chemistry whenever you want and engage with your fellow chemists around the world.

I have some very special thank yous to give out this year to the following folks:

  • Andy Brunning of @compoundchem fame. Not only did Andy design all of the graphics for this year, he also provided a really cool infographic competition of his own to celebrate #RealTimeChem Week. I look forward to working with Andy again in the future.
  • Katey Birtcher and all the folks at Elsevier’s SciTechConnect who ran the Blog Carnival this year and promoted the week. Your enthusiasm for the project has really kept me going and I loved the round ups.
  • Nicola Burton, formerly @Elements_UD now @SpaceBambee, thanks greatly for the #RealTimeChem Award badges
  • Kudos to the Royal Society of Chemistry and all my friends at work for supporting the project and also getting on board from time to time.
  • Finally, thanks to Guido Kemeling, Editor-in-Chief of @ChemSusChem, who was kind enough to organise the prizes for the The Great #RealTimeChem Cook Off. Thanks to all the other ladies and gentlemen at WileyVCH for the support as well.

With all of these out of the way, it’s time to get onto this years awards. This was, as ever, ridiculously tough because there were many excellent tweets all deserving a prize. Thankfully, I have a few more prizes to give out this time around!

Below you will find out the results. Drum roll please?

 

RTCWTOW

TOP PRIZE WINNERS

The three tweeters below all win a #RealTimeChem Week 2015 mug of their very own like the below:

Everyone loves a mug right? You can do all kinds of things with them!

BrianWagner

From Wednesday. Brian Wagner (@drummerboy2112) is one of THE chemists to follow on Twitter in my humble opinion and this simple demonstration of Boyle’s Law using a marshmallow, a flask and some suction was arguably the most popular tweet of the whole week in terms of retweets and favourites. Science can be fun and informative both at the same time.

Lauravanlaeren

From Wednesday. Laura van Laeren (@lauravlaeren) strikes again, sharing a lot of great tweets throughout the week, including several pictures of her beautifully painted finger nails. However, it was her starry night flask that caught a lot of attention this year and I couldn’t ignore it’s awesomeness. Pretty colours for the win!

emilyhardy

From Saturday. Speaking of pretty colours, it was National Chemistry Week in the US at the same time, with colours being the big theme. Emily Hardy (@EmilyEHardy) snuck in on the Saturday to show off some fantastic chemiluminescence. Really spectacular.

Don’t forget to DM me your address so I can post your prize to you.

RUNNERS UP

The remaining 9 Pt Awards winners will all get a #RealTimeChem keyring like the one below:

keyring

All winners, DM me your address & I’ll post your key ring to you.

NOTE: Au/Ag award winners. Unfortunately, you don’t get a prize (except the kudos),  but thank you for taking part!

GRTCCO

I was lucky this year to be given some extra prizes for a new competition. The first #RealTimeChem Cook off! There were quite a few entries and below you can find the 6 chosen winners.

The Grumpy Chemist (@Chemistry_Kat) 

Henrik Pedersen (@hacp81)

Victoria Stafford (@ToriaStafford)

Massimo Grillo (@MassimoGrillo63)

Tom Kuntzleman (@pchemstud)

Debbie Mitchell (@heydebigale)

 

All 6 of these tweeters win a copy of “What’s Cooking in Chemistry?: How Leading Chemists Succeed in the Kitchen“.

Send me your address details via DM and the folks at Wiley will send you your prize*!

 

*Book prizes sponsored by @WileyVCH’s society chemistry journals. These are: @ChemEurJ., @ChemistryOpen, @ChemBioChem, @ChemCatChem, @ChemMedChem, @ChemElectroChem, @ChemPhysChem, @ChemPlusChem, @ChemSusChem, @EurJIC, and Eur. J. Org. Chem (all journals of ChemPubSoc Europe); @ChemAsianJ, @AsianJOrgChem, and @ChemNanoMat (all journals of the Asian Chemical Editorial Society); and @angew_chem (a journal of @GDCh_aktuell)

 

 

Well, that’s all folks. All awards are now given and #RealTimeChem Week is officially over for this year. Once more, thank you to everyone who took part. May all your chemistry dreams come true.

mischief managed

-Doctor Galactic & The Lab Coat Cowboy-

“The Great #RealTimeChem Cook Off” Competition

Posted on by doctorgalactic

GRTCCO

Chemistry is like cooking. Just don’t lick the spoon.

Hello RealTimeChemists,

Over the past few years I’ve noticed that many of you have shared some fantastic creations, not just from your laboratory at work, but also from your kitchen at home.

There is a very strong association between chemistry and cooking, and to celebrate this connection, I’m very happy to announce the first ever #RealTimeChem Cook off!

MasterChef

Don’t worry these guys aren’t going to be judging you. © BBC

Prizes for the Cook off have been kindly provided by the folks at WileyVCH* [special thanks to Guido Kemeling (E-in-C of @ChemSusChem), @ChemSusChem, @angew_chem & @AsianJOrgChem). We have 6 copies of “What’s Cooking in Chemistry?: How Leading Chemists Succeed in the Kitchen” to give away. This fascinating book acts as a Who’s Who in organic chemistry, showing what top scientists like to cook.

All you have to do to enter the competition is to tweet a culinary creation (anything cooking, baking or food related) using the hashtags #RealTimeChem & #whatscooking this week. Your tweet should ideally include a short description with a picture or video of your creation (the description can even talk about the chemistry in your cooking! It’s up to you). Alternatively, you can write a recipe for others to try. 

 

Everyone who Tweets a cooking related tweet using these hashtags will be entered into the competition and 6 favourites will win a book. This competition runs until the end of #RealTimeChem Week 2015 (25th October) so you’ve got some time to get some ingredients in and post a tweet (I mean cake baking is such a weekend thing!). I expect many of you will have some free time to get in the kitchen on the weekend in particular, so the perfect excuse to share a little more fun #RealTimeChem and possibly win a prize. Just remember Mary Berry expects…

mary berry

 

If you have any questions about the competition, please let me know via Twitter (@RealTimeChem) 

-Doctor Galactic-

*Book prizes sponsored by @WileyVCH’s society chemistry journals. These are: @ChemEurJ., @ChemistryOpen, @ChemBioChem, @ChemCatChem, @ChemMedChem, @ChemElectroChem, @ChemPhysChem, @ChemPlusChem, @ChemSusChem, @EurJIC, and Eur. J. Org. Chem (all journals of ChemPubSoc Europe); @ChemAsianJ, @AsianJOrgChem, and @ChemNanoMat (all journals of the Asian Chemical Editorial Society); and @angew_chem (a journal of @GDCh_aktuell)

About the #RealTimeChem Week 2015 Awards

Posted on by doctorgalactic

Hi everybody,

#RealTimeChem Week 2015 is almost upon us and I’ve had a few folks on Twitter asking me about the Awards that are given out during the event. Information can be found on the FAQ like everything else about #RealTimeChem, but I thought I’d make things even clearer in a separate post.

What are the awards?

Every year I bestow awards upon my favourite contributions to #RealTimeChem Week. This year’s awards have been revamped a little with a new structure and some extra prizes for those winning the top awards.

Awards are given out each weekday with a joint weekend award giving you 6 opportunities to win.

There are three levels of award: silver, gold and platinum as shown in all their shiny goodness below:

silverawardgoldawardplataward

The new award badges this year have been provided by the excellent Nicola Burton (formerly on Twitter as @Elements_UD) creator of Elements Unleashed.

Overall there will be 12 awards given each day: 6 silver, 4 gold and 2 platinum.

How do I enter?

Simple. Tweet some fantastic chemistry any time between 19th-25th October using #RealTimeChem in your tweet and you are in with a chance of winning.

Please note: While you can most certainly win multiple awards throughout the week, in the interest of fairness I try to make sure that Tweeters only win one Platinum Award during the week. This is in order to give more folks the chance to win a prize.

What can I win? 

The prizes for the #RealTimeChem Week awards do come out of my somewhat meagre pocket so unfortunately I can’t give prizes to every award winner , but everyone will each receive a PDF certificate to keep for posterity (Silver, Gold or Platinum).

Winners of the platinum awards each day will also have the chance to win the big prize as one of the top 3 “Tweets of the Week”. All 12 winners of platinum awards will be entered into the final running for “Tweets of the week” with the 3 winners receiving the top prize and the remaining 9 platinum award winners receiving the smaller secondary prize.

This year’s prizes are shown below and are adorned with this years logo designed by @compoundchem.

Tweets of the week top prize: 

Everyone loves a mug right? You can do all kinds of things with them!

Everyone loves a mug right? You can do all kinds of things with them!

Platinum awards secondary prize:

A snazzy keyring for the remaining 9 Pt award winners (in case you are wondering it’s blank on the back.)

If you have any other questions about the awards, please ask me on Twitter.

-Doctor Galactic-