Vilar group lights up Imperial Festival 2018

Tiffany demonstrates some fluorescent household objects at the Imperial Festival Schools Day.

The Vilar group lit up the Imperial Festival 2018 with an interactive stall demonstrating some “enlightening molecules”.

The annual Imperial Festival took place on 28-29 April and the group’s stall was part of the “Discovering Worlds” section, as well as being one of a chosen few stalls selected for the schools day preceding the Festival. Over the three days, hundreds of children had fun taking part in the activities and learning more about the chemistry of light-emitting molecules. 13 members of the group gave up their time to inspire this next generation of scientists throughout the weekend, with even more assisting in the preparations.

Led by Tiffany, the Vilar group put together a series of activities that explored the light-emitting properties of molecules that much of the group’s research relies on. Festival participants had the chance to see how household objects look under UV light, find out how chemiluminescence makes glow sticks work, extract chlorophyll from spinach and build their own fluorescent molecules with spaghetti and marshmallows.