The Times We Lived In: Somewhere between Einstein and Frankenstein

I t’s hard to wow an audience with a scientific experiment – and when the audience is wearing school uniform the difficulty soars exponentially, raising the smile-stakes even higher.

In our photo, however, the scientist in the stripy pinny appears to have gone straight for the jackpot by creating a universe in a bottle. “Look, it’s the Big Bang, and it’s still smoking. . . !”

Okay, it’s actually a container of liquid nitrogen. But there’s the faintest whiff of a comedy Frankenstein movie about that billowing cloud of fumes – and also, as our photographer was all too well aware, about the cloud of untamed hair which billows about the head of Dr Ray Plevey from the School of Chemistry at the University of Birmingham.

Between the hair and the smoking container, he’s the very image of a mad scientist from the movies. In real life he was more of a missionary – a spokesperson for science who, aided and abetted by his wife Rosemary, came to a 1999 Science Week event at the Dublin Institute of Technology, Kevin Street, armed with a host of magic tricks and a message: “chemistry is fun”.

The Pleveys took their inspiration from TV cookery shows – hence the stripy pinny. Among the items on the scientific menu were, according to the accompanying article, a spot of snake-charming, eggs being cooked in liquid nitrogen and the turning of water to wine.

Dr Plevey’s antics certainly raised a laugh from most of his 120-strong audience, though the girl third from the left in the second row is definitely NOT amused – while a couple of the ladies in the front row are looking at something else entirely. Perhaps they’re watching Ms Plevey turn some Bud Light into “a glowing aqua beverage”.

Which, in 1999, was quite a trick. Nowadays, of course, liquid nitrogen features in the snazziest cocktails, and is also commonly used to make upmarket ice cream.

Modern life, eh? Yum.