Hello everybody,

First off, apologies for the lack of updates recently. I’ve been rather busy so far this year both at work and at home so haven’t had the time to do much on the blog. I’m hoping to relaunch the major features like #RealTimeChemInFocus soon.

In the meantime, it’s no secret that I work for the Royal Society of Chemistry as a publishing editor. Generally, I’ve kept #RealTimeChem and the RSC apart, but this year I’ll be making a bit of an exception.

The RSC is the world’s oldest chemical society and is celebrating is 175^th anniversary in 2016. As such, it’s going all out this year to recognise it’s history and the chemical community.

It’s hoping that everyone will take some time this year to dedicate 175 minutes to chemistry and then share your story with the rest of the community. Obviously, I know a lot of your spend near 24/7 dedicating yourself to chemistry, but this is a good opportunity to try something different that you may not have considered before.

How does this link into #RealTimeChem and social media? Well, you can share your stories via the dedicated hashtag #Time4Chem, which I’ll be keeping an eye out for this year too.

I’d greatly encourage everyone in the #RealTimeChem community to have some fun with this if you have the time this year. It’s only 175 mins (that’s, like, less than 3 hours) The possibilities of what you can do for your 175 minutes are pretty much endless, but here’s a few suggestions:

• Take part in some education outreach – a lot of Universities have outreach departments
• Start a chemistry podcast/youtube channel – chat about chemistry, show off some reactions or chemistry concepts, have some fun.
• Spend some time editing wikipedia – chemistry articles can always be updated and your knowledge may be just what the world’s biggest free encyclopedia needs.
• Start a chemistry blog – enjoy writing? Enjoy chemistry? Why not combine both together?
• Contribute to ChemSpider Synthetic Pages (http://cssp.chemspider.com/)

 

There are many more examples on the RSC website:

http://www.rsc.org/about-us/our-history/175-anniversary/

Just don’t forget to let the RSC know by keeping them up-to-date with #Time4Chem.

Now in particular is a great time to start, as this week is the anniversary week and sees the start of the RSC’s 175 faces of Chemistry exhibition at Burlington House in London – so why not spend some of your 175 minutes celebrating diversity in science? It runs from 22^nd February to 4^th March.

More information at the link:

http://www.rsc.org/diversity/175-faces/

http://www.rsc.org/events/detail/21557/175-faces-of-chemistry-exhibition

 

Ciao for now,

-Doctor Galactic and The Labcoat Cowboy-