A team of Sixth Form scientists were among the front-runners in a prestigious national Chemistry competition run by Cambridge University and a university in the Czech Republic.
QE’s Chem Taj team were ranked fifth out of the 42 teams competing in the Cambridge Chemistry Race, many of them drawn from the country’s leading academic schools.
The five-strong team’s score of 113 points was actually identical to the scores recorded by the teams coming third and fourth, but, in line with the rules, they were given a lower ranking based on the nature of the questions they answered.
Congratulating the Year 13 team, Head of Chemistry Julia Lister said: “The boys adapted very well to the format of the competition, which had to be run entirely online because of the lockdown, keeping their heads under the pressure of competition as they raced to answer as many questions as they could within the two-hour time limit.”
The competition was originally scheduled to take place at the University of Cambridge’s Chemistry Department.
Instead, QE’s team members, Bhargab Ghoshal, Janujan Satchi, Arnav Sharma, James Tan and Khai Tran, worked from their own homes, communicating and completing the race through the Moodle online platform. The event’s opening and closing ceremonies were broadcast on YouTube, while the video-calling platform, Gather Town, was also used.
The boys are pictured, top, at work on a problem, and above right with Dr Lister during the competition.
James said: “Although I was disappointed the competition was not taking place in Cambridge as planned, I still enjoyed it and found it to be a welcome distraction during lockdown. In particular, I liked how the questions built upon our current A-level knowledge, but also required us to research into more advanced topics, such as hemiacetals and macrocycles.”
Khai agreed, saying “it was interesting to apply the Chemistry we’ve learnt to topics beyond our specification”, while Janujan said that by working as a team, they were able to “apply different thought processes to the problem”.
Chemistry Race originated in 2015 as a Czech competition, called Chemiklání, at the University of Pardubice in the city of Pardubice, 96km east of Prague. It proved to be extremely popular among Czech pupils, and the scale of the competition rapidly grew every year.
In 2020, Adam Přáda, one of the organisers of the Czech competition and a Cambridge student, initiated a Cambridge branch of the competition, the Cambridge Chemistry Race.
Once a team answers a question successfully, they are presented with a new one and a live leader-board is updated. Half-an-hour before the ‘race’ ends, the ranking is hidden; the final winners are announced at the closing ceremony.
The questions include easy riddles, tasks of A-level difficulty and more complex chemical problems. Competitors are allowed to use books or notes, since the questions mainly aim to test problem-solving skills and chemical understanding, rather than knowledge.
Questions asked in the competition included:
Q. Imagine that somebody loses 10 kg of fat over three months. 10 kg is quite a significant amount of matter; however, we don’t see pieces of meat falling off people who lose weight. How does the “fat” leave the body? Write down the formulae of the two main substances into which fat is broken down.
A. Carbon dioxide and water. One could figure this out using common sense, by realising that we exhale carbon dioxide all the time and that camels “store” water into fat.
Q. What is the highest possible mass percentage of hydrogen (H) for a neutral hydrocarbon? Give the answer as a percentage.
A. Maximizing the mass percentage of hydrogen can be done in two ways: by complete saturation (thus we consider alkanes) and by minimizing the number of carbon atoms. This is done, because for alkanes (empirical formula CnH2n+2) the addition of one carbon atom and two hydrogen atoms shifts the mass percentages in favour of carbon. We therefore seek the shortest alkane: methane. The mass percentage of hydrogen in methane is then 25.1 %.
And finally, this was identified as one of “this year’s more difficult problems” in the closing ceremony:
Q. How many atoms are there in 1.66×10-24 moles of argon.
A. Just one.
Question: Two congruent pentagons are each formed by removing a right-angled isosceles triangle from a square of side-length 1.
In a special lecture delivered via Zoom, Chris Budd, Professor of Applied Mathematics at Bath, first explained to the whole year group what mathematical modelling is, with contributions also coming from a number of his PhD students. In a highly illustrated presentation, he then set out modelling’s crucial role in determining the best strategy for fighting the pandemic, even drilling down into issues such as how shopping can be made safer in a pandemic.
The professor started his talk by revealing that, although not an Elizabethan, he had been born in Friern Barnet and had moved to Harrow Weald at primary school age, before going up to Cambridge to read Mathematics.
Professor Budd went on to explain how modelling has been used in the case of the Covid pandemic. There are three basic questions, he said. Firstly, how will the epidemic grow if the authorities do nothing (which was the case for the 1918 Spanish ‘flu epidemic)? Secondly, how can we stop the number of cases growing? And third, how should we change our behaviour to keep safe?
Modifying behaviour patterns is simply the most effective way to prevent the spread of Covid, which is why wearing masks, staying in closed bubbles and keeping 2m away from other people are the strategies the Government has been promoting most, he said.
The InDex team, drawn from Year 10, will be aiming to establish a solid online presence since, with none of the normal Young Enterprise trade fairs taking place this year because of Covid-19, they will have to rely heavily on internet sales.
Mr Czirok-Carman, a History teacher, added that the boys are aiming to create a product that has both a unique selling point and a significant purpose. They are already working well as a team, dividing up roles and designing the product, he said, meeting weekly to discuss their progress.
“There are such rapid advancements that people don’t always stop and think about how we can make this product suitable for everyone, as well as thinking about our carbon footprint and making the world a more sustainable place.
Pupils from the year group ‘bubble’ gathered in the Main School Hall for the final of the contest in which QE’s newest pupils gave speeches describing their submitted photos that were by turns comic and reflective, informative and sad.
Although the images, which were projected on to a screen, were important to the event, it was, in fact, primarily a test of boys’ abilities as public speakers. They had to speak for up to three minutes about a chosen photo – not necessarily one they had taken themselves – and were judged on the content, style and delivery of their speech. The presentations were judged by the Headmaster, Neil Enright.
Runner-up, for Broughton, was Shreyas Iyengar. He showed a holiday snap at the white cliffs of Dover. Walking to the top had been an achievement, he said, before adding “but the real take-away was spending time with my family”.
Mr Harrison said: “In the end, Zane was triumphant for Pearce House with a speech which talked about how the time he spent caring for a sunflower acted as a helping hand with, and a metaphor for, his first few weeks and months at QE.”
Year 9 Drama Club members performed an abridged version of Hamlet – and thanks to QE’s year group bubble system, their entire year were able to watch the performance in the Main School Hall.
This year, it had originally been planned to live-stream performances, but in the end it was decided simply to have the boys perform live at the School, with Mr Bonham-Carter filming them.
On the day of the performance, which replaced a Year 9 English lesson, Mr Bonham-Carter introduced the occasion, saying that Hamlet is a “play for us all”.