Screaming Jelly Babies and exploding puddings are being used to attract more recruits into science teaching.
These action-packed experiments are attempts to persuade the public that science is not a boring subject.
England's Training and Development Agency for Schools says 72% of people in an ICM poll thought science "dull".
In an image make-over to make the subject more appealing, the agency has put videos of five explosive experiments onto the YouTube website.
Deploying the science teacher's most exciting weapon - blowing things up - the videos from the teacher recruitment agency show a fireball made out of Instant Whip pudding and the prolonged, fiery, chemical demise of a "screaming Jelly Baby".
Image change
There are appropriate safety warnings about protective clothing and supervision, but there is no mistaking the crowd-pulling appeal of something going bang.
Watch the Jelly Baby experiment
Also in this series is the chance to watch a pumping amplified bass line creating spikes in some kind of fluid left on top of a speaker and a way to make banknotes fireproof.
This is the latest bid for science to rip off its anorak and draw in a wider audience - with the aim of overcoming the negative image suggested by the TDA poll.
This found that adults perceived science teaching as unenjoyable (83%), outdated (84%) and dull (72%).
The teacher training agency says that there are currently 3,670 trainee science teachers - helped by what has been growing interest in teaching as a profession.
The YouTube approach, with experiments filmed in real schools in a low quality home video style, shows a more dramatic image.
There is a growing genre of highly visual science experiments on such video sharing websites.
Among the classics are the explosive results of some sweets stuffed into fizzy drinks - such as Mentos mints in Coke - and "bottle rockets" created by pressurising plastic drinks containers.
These controlled moments of science drama are less alarming than another online speciality - science lessons that have gone wrong.
Here a variety of embarrassed science teachers are left looking anxiously at pieces of equipment that have exploded in unintended ways.
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