{"id":2744,"date":"2011-03-10T04:41:44","date_gmt":"2011-03-10T04:41:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/2011\/03\/essay-competition-in-your-element.html"},"modified":"2011-03-10T04:41:44","modified_gmt":"2011-03-10T04:41:44","slug":"essay_competition_in_your_elem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/2011\/03\/essay_competition_in_your_elem.html","title":{"rendered":"Essay competition: In your element"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>You may have noticed that the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/nchem\/archive\/categ_iye_032011.html?lang=en\">last page<\/a> of the journal each month is filled with a somewhat informal article in which someone writes about a particular element (you need a subscription to access these articles). To join in with the activities surrounding the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.chemistry2011.org\/\">International Year of Chemistry<\/a>, we\u2019re launching an essay competition based on this feature \u2014 we\u2019re inviting you to write an \u2018In Your Element\u2019-style essay about one of the following elements: helium, nitrogen, sodium, copper, bromine, indium or plutonium. The winners of the competition will see their essay published in <em>Nature Chemistry<\/em>, and will receive a year-long subscription to the journal.<\/p>\n<p>Each essay must be written by a single author, and each entrant can only submit a single essay (so choose wisely which one of the seven available elements you write about). We\u2019d particularly like to receive plenty of entries from younger writers and we encourage undergraduates, graduate students and postdocs to enter the competition, but it is also open to those slightly further on in their careers. To submit an essay, however, it must be no more than 5 years since the author has completed their final training appointment (Ph.D. or postdoctoral position) as of the 1 August 2011.<\/p>\n<p>The essays should make some mention of current research involving the chosen element, but should go beyond a simple \u2018catalogue\u2019, or summary, of such uses. We\u2019re looking for essays that stand out from the crowd, perhaps by including interesting stories about an element\u2019s discovery and\/or history, or by highlighting unusual aspects of an element\u2019s chemistry or some crucial relevance to our everyday lives beyond simply academic or industrial research. Essays should be written in an informal and entertaining manner that would appeal to a wide audience of chemists. As an example, the \u2018In Your Element\u2019 article on boron published in our first issue can be freely accessed <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/nchem\/journal\/v1\/n1\/full\/nchem.158.html\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The <em>Nature Chemistry<\/em> editors, with the help of an independent judge, will read the submitted essays with an eye for engaging and informative prose, as well as originality. This last point is very important \u2014 of course there are only so many ways you can say the usual things about a given element, but we don\u2019t want to see any essays that have a striking resemblance to any relevant Wikipedia pages or other published material (online or print).<\/p>\n<p>Entries must be received by 1 August 2011. Terms and conditions for the competition can be found in full <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/nchem\/iyeessay\/index.html\">here<\/a>. Any questions, please just ask (at nchem@nature.com or in the comments on this post or on Twitter \u2013 we\u2019re <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/naturechemistry\">@NatureChemistry<\/a>). Good luck to all \u2014 send us your great essays, we\u2019re hoping to be spoilt for choice!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You may have noticed that the last page of the journal each month is filled with a somewhat informal article in which someone writes about a particular element (you need a subscription to access these articles). To join in with the activities surrounding the International Year of Chemistry, we\u2019re launching an essay competition based on this feature \u2014 we\u2019re inviting you to write an \u2018In Your Element\u2019-style essay about one of the following elements: helium, nitrogen, sodium, copper, bromine, indium or plutonium. The winners of the competition will see their essay published in Nature Chemistry, and will receive a year-long subscription to the journal.&nbsp; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/2011\/03\/essay_competition_in_your_elem.html#wpn-more-2744\" class=\"more-link\">Read more<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/2011\/03\/essay_competition_in_your_elem.html\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":124,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2744","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anne-pichon","category-in-your-element"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2744","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/124"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2744"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2744\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2744"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2744"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2744"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}