When science is art and art is science

When I rocked up to a school chemistry class my teacher would sigh. I was good at English and history, art and music. But I was terrible at science. Physics was within touching distance if I really stretched. But chemistry? However hard I tried, I couldn’t work it out. Physics interacted with the world I knew, but chemistry, that was pure abstraction to me. Wrapping my brain cells around atoms and molecules gave me a headache. And learning the periodic table? Really?

On the topic of tables, I came across an intriguing video called Science is Awesome. I wish I’d seen this when I was at school. Apparently, science is mind-blowing and if you watch this video, you’ll see it’s true. It shows physics making the invisible visible with a table and a spoon of flour. What beautiful patterns soundwaves create — an art installation of metal and wheat. Science and art in one.

It reminds me of a trip my husband and I made to Lebanon in March 2020, just before Covid-19 shut everything down. We met wonderful people, ate amazing food, discovered fantastic architecture and learned about a tragic history reaching back thousands of years.

As we strolled along Beirut’s seafront, we couldn’t know five months later another catastrophe would strike. We visited all the bars, restaurants and bookshops that would later be blown to smithereens. At 6pm on…