Do your dreams ever look this trippy?

Brain imaging techniques have shown that our minds work differently when we’re asleep compared to when we’re awake. This got us thinking about one of life’s great questions: what is consciousness?

Can it be measured? Replicated? Created? Marcus du Sautoy puzzles over how we might measure consciousness using mathematical formulae, and looks to philosophy for a deeper understanding 🤔

Watch our new animation created by Diana Gradinaru:

Happy Chinese New Year!

Celebrate the #YearOfThePig with fireworks from our favourite human perpetual motion machine, Andrew Szydlo

🎆 This reaction is potassium chlorate + icing sugar reacting explosively with just 3 drops of sulphuric acid.

Icing sugar is a carbohydrate which gives the reaction energy, much like our own icing-fuelled sugar highs 😈

James Dewar was born #OnThisDay in 1842.

The Scottish chemist and physicist co-directed the Davy-Faraday Research Lab at the Ri from the end of the 19th Century. He is best known for inventing the Dewar flask aka vacuum flask aka Thermos.

Though he sadly didn’t profit from its widespread popularity, as he didn’t patent his invention before Thermos started using the design (🙃)

Dewar's flask aided his work into the liquefaction of then-so-called permanent gases like hydrogen and helium, as he could work at temperatures close to absolute zero 🌡❄️

Whilst at the Ri he built machinery to yield high quantities of liquid oxygen, and showed that liquid oxygen and liquid ozone are attracted to the poles of a magnet

Watch our liquid oxygen magnetism demo here ➡  https://youtu.be/rz57PJToGEs

Dewar created liquid hydrogen for the first time in 1898, solid hydrogen  in 1899, and he attempted to create liquid helium in the early 20th century 🙌

Click through an interactive version of this photo for a deeper look at his lecture on liquid hydrogen...

He also gave 9 series of Christmas Lectures for children! On topics ranging wide from 'A Soap Bubble' to 'The Story of a Meteorite' to 'The Chemistry of Light and Photography'.

Mean Girls Day meets the Nobel Prize on the best day of 2018 so far

Back in 1967 our former Director George Porter won the #NobelPrize in Chemistry for using lasers to study super fast chemical reactions ⚗️

In the 1950s, Porter had brought one of the first ruby lasers to the UK to develop his technique, Flash Photolysis

- First a strong flash of light from a laser excites a chemical’s molecules in a known quantity of a substance

- Then further flashes record how long it takes all excited molecules to return to their baseline state, by looking at the different proportions in the sample over time

Amazing to think how far we’ve come with laser technology in the last 60 years - especially looking at this year’s Nobel Prize in Physics winners! #pewpew

Michael Faraday achieved electromagnetic induction here at the Ri for the first time #OnThisDay in 1831

His work revolutionised our understanding of electricity and led to the development of electric generators, motors, inductors & transformers ⚡️

Electromagnetic induction is the production of an electromotive force (voltage) across an electrical conductor in a changing magnetic field.

You can find his electromagnetic induction ring and notes within our Museum and archival collection!

49 years ago today, humankind first set foot on the moon during the Apollo 11 mission - happy #MoonDay!

Watch archive footage from @nasa to learn more about the Apollo space race: https://youtu.be/1e6iXIxGj-8

If you’ve ever wondered who to thank for your ice cold drink on a hot Summer’s day, it’s this legend: James Dewar. Dewar invented the flask that many of us use daily. 🥤 Dewar never patented his invention of the flask. Instead, it was later patented and renamed by 2 German glass blowers, who set up the Thermos company, giving the Dewar flask its common name - the Thermos! *Dewar shakes fist*

The Dewar flask works by placing a smaller flask within a larger one, and sealing them at the neck. Between the 2 vessels is a gap which has had almost all of the air sucked out to create a near-vacuum. This vacuum reduces heat transfer between the drink inside your flask, and outside world, be it hot or cold. This is because there are too few particles in the vacuum for heat energy to transfer through it by conduction or convection currents.

Big news!

The 2018 CHRISTMAS LECTURES will be presented by Alice Roberts, biological anthropologist, broadcaster and Professor of Public Engagement in Science at the University of Birmingham.

We’re 99.4% the same as the next person yet 100% unique. In ‘Who am I?’, Alice will take us on a fascinating journey to answer this fundamental question of life.