This follows the success of last year’s ideal Yorkshire puddings (popovers to our American friends) – and the decree that they cannot be named so unless they rise to four inches or higher. Chemist, author and roast dinner expert John Emsley has issued a new recipe for nutrionally-balanced, chemically-perfect and extremely tasty gravy in the tradional fashion… sort of.

It combines some traditional elements with some chemistry magic – most controversial is the inclusion of soya sauce, normally associated with Eastern cuisine but here included in the quintessential Englishman’s Sunday roast.

Here’s John’s recipe:

Ingredients

The juices from a roast joint of meat, preferably beef
Flour
Vegetable water (cabbage)
Iodised salt
Teaspoon of dark soya sauce.
Pepper
Gravy browning if you prefer a darker gravy.

Method

The joint should be cooked on a bed of halved onions, carrots and celery on to which juices from the meat will slowly trickle. When the meat is cooked, remove it from the roasting tin along with the vegetables. Sprinkle a small amount of plain flour over the meat juices and fat. Stir to form a dough (roux) gradually adding the water in which vegetables have been cooked, preferably cabbage water. Ensure all the meat juices and Marmite-like deposits on the bottom of the roasting dish have dissolved. Then add iodised salt to taste and a teaspoon of dark soya sauce (rather than gravy browning) or a little red wine . Simmer to reduce the volume of liquid to the right consistency, stirring occasionally.

Chemical and nutritional composition of gravy

Protein from the collagen of the meat.
Vitamins, and especially B1, B6, folic acid, riboflavin and nicotinic acid.
Carbohydrate from the flour and gravy browning. Gravy browning is caramelised sugar and can be bought, or it can be made using the recipe in Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management published in 1859. This says to heat sugar until it caramelises but does not become too dark.
Minerals such as sodium and iodine.
Monosodium glutamate (MSG) from the soya sauce which brings out the meaty (umami) flavour.

What do you think? Share your own best gravy recipes in the comments…

So when flooded with queries from the public and RSC staff regarding the efficacy of conkers as a spider repellent, we shook ourselves dry and led the charge on a public scientific endeavour – to prove or dismiss the old wives’ tale that spiders really do hate conkers. For the best evidence (one way or the other) we’re offering a prize of £300.

We hypothesise that if it works there must be some chemistry in it. So the call went out to the public, through the illustrious pages of the Daily Telegraph, The Times and Daily Mail, various radio stations, and BBC Breakfast – and the public have responded with eyewitness accounts, photos, videos and even scientific experiments!

Let’s start with our own experiments. RSC staffer Will Russell cleared his busy schedule to spend part of his weekend taunting spiders with conkers and a control object (a table-tennis ball). The results were somewhat inconclusive – each spider reacted differently. Some good scientific methodology here: repeat experiments, a “control”, and the will to do a science experiment on the weekend.

Even Will’s rigorous experiments could not compare to those of Years 5 and 6 of Roselyon School in Cornwall, aided by teacher Mr Ferguson. The budding young scientists designed their own experiments with clearly-defined parameters for success, and demonstrated three of them on camera. They concluded that spiders weren’t bothered by conkers for the most part. Their video is below and well worth watching.

As I wade through the hundreds of letters and photos I’ve been sent, I’ll add more to the overall body of evidence. Below is a gallery of some of the more enlightening photos that we’ve been sent.

As Marion (Leigh) showers, a shadowy figure is seen through the shower curtain. The curtain is thrown back by the faceless figure, knife poised to strike, and Marion lets rip that famous bloodcurdling scream, as her attacker repeatedly stabs her to the backdrop of the now infamous orchestral stings.

It’s been recreated and parodied many times, but for some reason no-one has focused on the most important issue: such an indulgent shower is wasting a lot of water and setting a bad example.

Research we conducted previously with Ipsos MORI said that Britons (especially women) were among the most negligent showerers in Europe, with our French, German and Spanish neighbours being far more concerned about the amount of water wasted and composition of various soaps and gels we wash down the plughole.

So to draw attention to the plight, and attempt to remedy it, we’re looking for someone to fill the shoes… err… the role of Janet Leigh, and take part in a tasteful remake of the scene, to be titled Shower Murder.

The film will be a sixty-second video showing how one can shower effectively in one minute without wasting water. If you feel you’re the one for the role, send an email with a passport photo to elliotts at rsc dot org.

As reported in today’s Metro, we’re appealing to the public on this contentious issue: should you reboil or refill a kettle for that second cuppa? The best answer wins a trip down to London for two people to indulge in a British instution: tea at the Ritz.

There’s a huge body of opinion that maintains a bad-tasting brew is inevitable if you reuse water once boiled – some say it rids the water of taste-enhancing dissolved oxygen gas. There are others who heard from their grannies that reboiled water causes cancer.

But some say that the difference in taste and composition is minimal, and a new draught of water is just a waste of a precious resource – not to mention more expensive. Still others say it makes no difference at all!

Arguments about limescale, dissolved gases… surely this is just chemistry, yes? So there must be a scientific explanation for all this.

Explain your choice of reboiled or reused water, in a clear and scientific manner, in a comment to this post. The answer we judge to be the best will win a trip for two to London, and tea at the Ritz hotel on Piccadilly – incidentally just a few steps down the road from home of the RSC, Burlington House.

We’ll be closing comments on 30 June, so pull up your favourite search engine, give your granny a ring and present your theory below!

Click here if you can’t see the comments box.

Except I’m not.

In the Newcastle Literary and Philosophical Society in 1879, it was a Sunderland-born polymath named Joseph Swan who publicly demonstrated for the first time “a practicable incandescent light bulb”. The RSC honoured his brilliance last week by awarding a Chemical Landmark to the Lit & Phil.

Joseph Swan Chemical Landmark Plaque

To highlight this wonderful achievement, the RSC put out the call to find the UK’s longest burning light bulb. We found the Livermore Centennial Light in California has been burning 109 years; surely there’s a bulb in the UK that’s been burning longer? We can but hope.

I was chatting about Swan’s invention and the competition with Carol Off on “As It Happens“, a Canadian radio show on CBC Radio 1, and she posed the question “how many chemists does it take to change a light bulb?” I’m afraid to say world-renowned British wit failed me that day, and I could give no humourous response.

Does anyone out there have a decent punchline?

Today saw people flooding in to Burlington House’s courtyard from Piccadilly to try the RSC’s authentic Dickensian gruel. Held to order by the terrifying Mr Bumble, the public tucked into their traditional 1850s London workhouse cuisine.

The gruel was cooked up by our own chef Fabien Aid, and received mixed opinions: most thought the gruel itself was a tasty porridge, but the addition of onions certainly ruined a few officer-workers’ afternoons – or at least their colleagues’.

Giving out gruel – and thereby feeding the masses – serves to highlight the RSC’s upcoming report on food, “The Vital Ingredient“, which is launched later this month, and the RSC’s theme of food for 2009.

The pictures below were taken for the Press Association. Click each thumbnail to see the larger image, and the wide variety of faces people pulled while eating the gruel!

And if photos aren’t enough for you, here’s the news footage that appeared on Virgin news, MSN news and Daily Mirror videos… follow this link (goes to MSN News Videos).

From Mitch Groves (”a.k.a. Mitch Groves”) in Pasadena, California, I received a mind-boggling submission. It seems to include a complex understanding of chemical bonding and fundamental principles. I think. It’s a bit hard to tell.

I reproduce it here (after the jump) in the hope someone with greater cranial capacity than I can make sense of it: perhaps Mr Groves’s entry will be the Petrushka of the 22nd century.

We will be announcing the winner of our competition on or around the 20th January, having searched through nearly 2000 entries for the most rigorously proven hypothesis. Thank you for a puzzling but enjoyable read, Mr Groves.

“Everything that pertains to exact calculations of “running to” chemical displacements, can be a mass-combining quality control product. In the potential and excessively due confoundments of purposeless invoicing of chemical changes of the elements, volume-occupying supercritical value controls a mode resolution that an asymmetric relation solubilizes in the element of gold.
And if we can also understand, that in the order of reactions there are operating ratios that prevent electrons from falling into the nucleus, then bond dissociation energy shared between atoms can be regarded as a concept of non-bonding wave patterns. These patterns concern time’s multidimensional interplay of divergent and generalized sets, rendering currents of nonfavourable locations over into a qualitative synthesization of square planar weight. Gold’s control mode resolution makes it impervious to oxidation, and the remarkable grip it has on its outer electron is a function of its nucleus’s powerful positive charge.

So, in this conjecture of the manipulable conditions of the solution of “The Italian Job” literal cliffhanger, Michael Caine goes into piecewise, rational function meditation – remembering some explanation of it given by Jimi Hendrix on British television a few years before and as yet still living. He, that is Caine, establishes generalized bandwidth with probability substitutions, by turning on the bus’s commercial radio receiver and atomizing it. This “atomizing” consists of switching the tuner dial back and forth in random and time-altering patterns, swinging to and fro.
As Caine does this, he meditates on the supercritical superconductivity of the gold’s electron power filling the bus and being interpreted, and interpolated, in synchronous power with the radio jostlings.
As the result, provided that Caine continues concentrating, a special sequence of probability time-current predicts the awesome power of the gold to electrify a good future for the mission. The electronically-bandwidthed gold then moves, and lifts the bus up, and the fold – for all we know – can stay pretty electric. The mission is saved, at least until Caine and his henchmen get caught. That the gold cannot prevent.”

From Mitch Groves, a.k.a. Mitch Groves, Pasadena CA.

Stephen George, from Australia, sent us by FedEx these sample vials, containing semiconductor nanocrystals in toluene solution:

CdSe/ZnS Core Shell nanocrystal quantum dots in toluene - not exactly 100% chemical free but the best we've had yet!

Mr George’s claim is based on the exciton confinement properties of such nanocrystals – they create a so-called  “quantum dot” where electrons are restricted in three dimensions.

The claim was that an “electron is not a chemical and that the solution/matrix is just a container.” Like other less well thought out claims we’ve heard, the necessity of the container rules this entry out from winning the prize. Mr George’s contention that a material’s properties are defined by its electrons only was also in dispute.

Having said all that, Mr George set about this challenge in a scientific manner, not regurgitating the same nonsense the advertising companies do, but methodically assessing the best candidate based on his own research. His entry is clearly streets ahead of claims of “100% chemical free organic olive oil” that I have received!

The following day I had an invoice from FedEx for the postage. In recognition of Mr George’s enthusiasm and creativity, although his entry is not eligible for the £1 million, I will reward him by paying the FedEx bill of £42.44. Not a bad second prize, but I won’t be giving out any more.

Thanks again to Stephen George for his creative entry.

It seems, however, that their efforts may have been in vain. I had an email from the Leatherhead Drama Festival Organising Committee, reproduced with kind permission:

Sir Michael with the award (picture: Andy Newbold)

“We are at a loss as to why there is so much urgent panic to explain how the bullion would have been rescued. The coach featured in the “Italian Job” (1969) is still teetering on the edge…..of the “Sir Michael Caine Drama Award” trophy, a unique steel construction with an authentic coach which is still rocking, dangerously.  The Drama Award trophy is presented in May each year at the Leatherhead Drama Festival (in Surrey) by Sir Michael Caine himself (aka Charlie Croker).

“The trophy was designed and constructed by ‘Fire and Iron’ at Rowhurst Forge in North Leatherhead. The enclosed pictures show Sir Michael contemplating the coach on the cliff-edge and struggling with the trophy as he prepares to present it to the Winning Drama Group, recently.  How the coach was miraculously reduced in size and whether the gold is still intact within the coach has not been ascertained, but enquiries are still continuing.

“However, the present size of the haul and therefore its current value may render the extraction uneconomic.”

The photo, taken by Andy Newbold, is also reproduced with the kind permission of David Brett of the Leatherhead Drama Festival Organising Committee. Thank you David!

So the RSC’s petition and Five-Decade Challenge report have made an impact at the highest level. We’ve managed to start the debate about what we assess in exams and what is needed for the UK to remain internationally competitive.

Science minister Lord Drayson

Nearly 5000 people have signed our online petition. There have been comments for and against our stance. One of our RSC members has resigned, to my sadness, but many others have written to thank the RSC for what it has done. We’ve had support from teachers, scientists and the public. We have people picking holes in how we’ve done it.

But no one, absolutely no one, has said that it was wrong to ask the question – to challenge the current perceived wisdom and the status quo. Our members want the RSC to campaign and that’s what we’ve done!

So what do we want next? We, like Lord Drayson, want our young talented scientists to be stretched. We want well provisioned, modern laboratories – with technical support in schools. We want well supported science teachers to nurture and develop the next generation of citizens, some of whom will become scientists of tomorrow but all of whom will use science in their everyday lives.

For this we need a modern curriculum – and we need a better assessment framework that demonstrates abilities in problem solving, critical thinking and the application of mathematics. It’s not a lot to ask. Let’s get all sides – teachers, industry, examiners and other experts together to make it happen.

Maybe Ofqual could take the lead…