Professor Tony Ryan
[Table is wheeled in.] That's not the only thing we can do with surface tension. It controls the interaction of the material and its liquid, and Jon's coming in now, we hope. So he's got a slide and it's on an angle and the bottom of the slide hates water and the top of the slide loves water.

You've just got to find the sweet spot, it's a bit like a tennis racquet. [Shot of water droplets.] See the water droplets running uphill.

Isn't that brilliant, OK. Now the top of the drop is happier in contact with the surface than the bottom of the drop, so everything just 'udges' up so you can actually make the water roll uphill.

It rolls so far that the gravity balances the surface energy. Cheers, mate. Round of applause for Jon. [Applause.]

[Footage on overhead screen of fly and water boatman.] Now, whilst we're very clever in the chemistry department in Sheffield, nature got there first. So up on the screen is a fly that's fallen in the water and swimming towards it is a very hungry pond skater and it's swimming on its elbows, because its elbows are really greasy and the water doesn't like them and the surface tension keeps them up and eventually they all swarm round the fly and get their dinner.

[Table is wheeled on.] Now talking about dinner, or should I say, breakfast, yeah. This that Annie's just brought on is a non-stick pan and here is a Teflon egg, right. [Laughter.]

[Tony demonstrates sticking qualities of Teflon egg onto non-stick pan.] It came as a big surprise to the production team, Teflon's actually white, right. Non-stick pans are coloured just so that you don't get an unsightly looking pan when it kind of picks up the odd scratch. So let's see how non stick that pan is, give it a shake, OK.

So it's a non-stick pan and a non-stick pan surface.

Let's just see if we can stick them on. Now if you have something in a sticky pan it doesn't stick straightaway, does it. So it takes a while if you're cooking something for it to stick, so I want you to count to ten with me.Go - 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10.

And it's stuck.
How hard has it stuck?
Well ...Oh, I've only just got it off.
You see we've learned already to stick Teflon things together.
Non-stick frying pans can be made to stick to non stick frying pans, if you know how to manage the surface chemistry.

See I've followed those rules. I've made something and put it in here. Even if it was ... we glued two pieces of aluminium together, so we first roughened the surfaces by shooting sand at them and then we cleaned them of any grease by washing them with a solvent and we chose a glue that was well matched to the surface and it covered every nook and cranny and to test how is it, how good it is, I'm going to use a friend of my family, a lad called Ollie. You can come down now Ollie.

[Ollie stands with Tony.] Oh, sorry, oh, you're behind me, you've moved. How are you doing mate? [All right].You all right? [Yeah].
OK, so what we're going to do is me and you are going to get in this chair - [laughter] - right.
[Chair is lowered from ceiling.] Down it comes. You don't have to worry though, alright?

So this, do you trust it? [Yeah].
Are you sure? Do you think it's as good a bond as that egg was to that frying pan? [Yeah].

Oh, OK. See, there's the glued part ... let's get in here. [They sit on chair.] Don't be frightened, Ollie, we're not going far, OK. [Laughter]

Up we go, up we go, Ollie, we're going up.
Ho ho, glued together, how are we doing?

This bond, which isn't very big will hold up to four tons, it could have picked up a double decker bus.
See the glues we use for all these jobs of putting these aluminium pieces together are the same ones that are used to glue jumbo jets and land speed record holders.
So today we've explored the science and the materials that'll help us become the next Paula Radcliffe or Johnny Wilkinson. Even if it's just in the playground.

[Ollie and Tony sit on chair.] And I hope you realise, give us a smile mate, I hope you realise it's not just about your trainers, it's about every time you move, by train, plane or automobile.

[Applause/music/credits roll.]