Director's Notes:

The original idea for this film came from a school trip to the Hadron Collider in Switzerland. We watched a rap about CERN and we thought we could do something similar about radio-activity as it is a subject where people know the terminology but often don’t understand the science.

We had already done radioactivity as a subject for our GCSE course so we were quite familiar with it. We worked out how to explain the science first and made sure we covered all the main facts. Natania wrote the words and music which I then storyboarded to create the film. We were able to shoot the film in a couple of hours — it would have been shorter but we kept getting the giggles, especially at Thembi as the mad professor!. It was all done on location at Sydenham High School in London. The editing and sound recording took the longest time as it was important to make sure it was cut to reflect the rap.

We’re really lucky that our school encourages us to do things like this. It’s an independent, all girls school where we are encouraged to explore all our different interests. We are able to combine physics for instance with other subjects and skills like film-making and sound recording which makes it a brilliant school.

Winner: Institute of Physics Best Physics Film, 2009

Winner: Flipside Most Entertaining Film, 2009

Winner: Best Original Score, 2009

Nominee: Best Film — Secondary, 2009