making perfume...medieval styleee!

Now as much as I enjoy my job I wouldn't want to bore you with the details of what I do however this is really cool. whilst teaching summer school here, we done a special thing with the local kids whereby we explored the Islamic contribution to science and technology over the ages.

No its not a space age bong but apparatus to make perfume using household stuff. For those of you that are interested, this is a steam distillation of orange peel to make orange scented perfume...and it actually works!

Now to give credit where its due the original distillation technique was devised by the Muslim scholar Jabir ibn Hayyan (722-815). The ideas were taken from an excellent website (www.1001inventions.com) detailing Muslim contributions to science as well as containing a teachers resource pack on doing lots of science experiments...enjoy!