Professor Martyn Poliakoff, whose wild grey hair and encyclopedic knowledge have drawn comparison with Albert Einstein, have now been viewed more than 6 million times on YouTube.

The University of Nottingham academic has attracted an international following and the acclaim of Nobel-winning scientists with playful clips exploring the properties of all 118 elements of the periodic table. He has engaged a generation of students with whimsical anecdotes, scientific facts and huge explosions.

To illustrate the chemical reaction behind the Chernobyl blast, the professor and his assistants detonated a balloon full of hydrogen in a laboratory. Frustrated by the size of the blast they repeated the experiment outside with a bigger balloon, creating a blazing red fireball!

The professor has received hundreds of fan e-mails and autograph requests from children across the world. One of his videos was watched 200,000 times in just 24 hours. “I lectured to more people that day than I have in the whole of the rest of my life,” he says. “A lot of them seemed to be very interested in my hair. But what’s nice is that so many of the YouTube commenters are talking chemistry between themselves. They are learning.”

The appeal of the videos lay in their spirit of chaotic discovery, he said. “They are getting a message to the children that — although their teachers are very nice — chemistry can be much more fun.”

Prof Poliakoff’s videos can be viewed at www.periodicvideos.com OR www.youtube.com/periodicvideos.

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