To improve reproducibility in the lab, these chemists press ‘record’

Mattias Björnmalm of Imperial College London cares deeply about scientific reproducibility. When he and collaborators went skydiving to test how metal-organic framework crystals form in low-gravity-like conditions, he documented the whole thing on video. Björnmalm is part of a growing number of chemists who are using inexpensive video equipment, such as cell phone cameras and action cameras like GoPros, to record their step-by-step experimental procedures. Strapping on a camera and jumping out of a plane is an extreme example of recording an experiment, but even the more mundane videos are proving to be useful communication tools both in the lab and in published articles.