Viewing archives for Academic enrichment

All boys in Years 7 & 8 took part in this year’s Junior Maths Challenge – and the overwhelming majority took gold, silver or bronze for their performance.

In total, some 341 of the QE entrants won certificates – a significant increase on last year’s tally of 279 – with 154 achieving gold and a further 120 taking silver and 67 gaining bronze. Nationally, it is only the top 40% of pupils who receive gold, silver and bronze certificates, which are given in the ratio 1:2:3.

As a result of their performances in the Challenge, 21 boys this year have qualified for the Junior Mathematical Olympiad competition and a further 95 have qualified for the other follow-on round, known as the Junior Kangaroo. Around 1,200 of the highest scorers nationally are invited to take part in the Olympiad.

Assistant Head of Mathematics Wendy Fung said: “We are delighted with how well the boys have done and look forward to the results of the Olympiad and Kangaroo. Much of the success among the Year 8 boys stems from the excellent guidance and help given to them at our Junior Élite Maths group by mentors from Years 10 and 11.”

Best in School certificates went to Maxwell Johnson, of Year 7, and Yash Makwana, of Year 8, who achieved identical scores of 130 out of a possible 135 in the UK Mathematics Trust competition.

“I’m incredibly pleased with my result and would like to thank my Élite Maths Mentor, Vincent Tang [of Year 11], for helping me to learn how to go about Maths Challenge questions,” said Yash.

Having achieved such signal success at the first attempt in the Challenge, Maxwell said he is now “looking forward to trying the Olympiad”.

Forty-four Year 9 boys visited the major battle sites and cemeteries from World War I in a trip designed to reinforce their classroom History lessons on the conflict.

With plenty of opportunity to walk through preserved trenches just as this year’s poppies were starting to flower, the boys had time to reflect on life in the trenches. Some sites illustrated the global nature of the conflict, showing the role of countries from the British Empire and Commonwealth – particularly Canada and nearby Newfoundland.

History teacher Simon Walker said: “The trip was important both emotionally and analytically, helping students understand how trench warfare worked and appreciate the experience of those who fought, as well as giving them an opportunity to reflect on the cost of war and consider what we can learn from the way soldiers have been memorialised.”

The trip aligned closely with the Year 9 scheme of work, which covers the changing nature of warfare up to 1945, with World War I a major topic.

On their visit to one site, Vimy Ridge, the guides for the QE boys and the four accompanying members of staff were students on a programme funded by the Canadian government, reflecting the national importance of the site in Canada.

One striking contrast was seen in the ways the fallen were commemorated at:

• Tyne Cot cemetery – the resting place of more than 11,900 servicemen of the British Empire at the battlefield of the Third Battle of Ypres (also known as the Battle of Passchendaele), where boys learned that many bodies could not be identified.
• Thiepval Memorial – commemorating 72,246 British and South African servicemen known to have died in the Battles of the Somme whose bodies could not be found.
• Essex Farm cemetery – a smaller Allied cemetery, with some moving examples of men from the ‘pals’ battalions’ who died on the same day being buried with their headstones touching to show solidarity between them.
• Beaumont-Hamel – the site of a memorial as well as trenches where Newfoundlanders fought during the Somme campaign; with 84% of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment battalion dying, the conflict brought devastation to some communities, depriving Newfoundland of most of its young men and seriously damaging its economy.
• The German Langemark cemetery – here, all graves are communal, with one huge mass grave in the middle and thousands of tiny names engraved on the stones around it. The headstones are very plan slabs laid flat on the ground, the relative lack of dignity in burial illustrating the hostility of Belgians towards Germans after the war. (The mass grave was partly because the Belgians would not grant the Germans enough land for individual burials.

Other memorable highlights of the trip to the sites in France and Belgium included the sight of Lochnagar Crater, the biggest crater of World War I, where boys learned about tunnelling and the use of mines. They attended the Last Post ceremony at Menin Gate in Ypres to commemorate soldiers lost in the 1914–1918 – a ceremony performed every evening since 1927, even during World War II. They also learned how medical provision developed during the conflict, visiting a field hospital where John McCrae worked as a surgeon and composed his famous poem, In Flanders Fields.

On the final day came visits to La Coupole and Blockhaus Bunker, which were sites for the production and launch of V1 and V2 rockets during World War II, where there was information on the role of concentration camp slave labour used by the Nazis. “These visits helped to develop students’ understanding of the changing nature of warfare in World War II, as well as providing a foundation for the space race and arms race topics that form an important part of the GSCE Conflict and Tension unit on the Cold War.

There were lighter moments, too, including a popular visit to the Leonida chocolate shop and the time when the boys’ keen-eyed coach driver spotted a World War I wire fence post unearthed and left at the roadside by a local farmer.

Overall, said Mr Walker, the trip gave boys “an opportunity to deepen their understanding of the Year 9 theme about the changing nature of warfare, whilst also giving them personal experiences and time to reflect in order to help them develop and articulate their own emotional responses”. In addition, it supported understanding of the genocide topic being covered in the second half of term, and of GCSE topics including the Cold War and the Health and the People unit.

Year 11 boy Saruthan Seelan achieved a top-50 finish among élite mathematicians in his age group in this year’s nationwide Intermediate Olympiad, with four other pupils coming in the top 100.

Like Saruthan, Year 10 pupil James Tan and Year 9 boys Athiyan Chandramohan, Abhinav Santhiramohan and Dan Suciu all won medals for their performance, while Andy Kwak, of Year 9, was awarded a distinction certificate for coming in the top 25% nationally.

The six were among 27 boys from Years 9 to 11 who qualified for the Olympiad after performing strongly in the UK Mathematics Trust’s Intermediate Challenge. An additional 21 were awarded merit certificates.

Congratulating all of them, Assistant Head of Mathematics Wendy Fung said: “Solving any one of the problems set is an achievement and those who did more than that deserve corresponding praise.”

Saruthan said afterwards: “The Olympiad questions help me to extend my understanding of Maths.” James found solving the problems “very satisfying”, while Abhinav praised the “interesting maths” involved.

Nearly 1,700 students took part in the Olympiad. In each year group, the top 50 receive book prizes, the top 100 receive a medal and the top 25% receive a certificate of distinction.

In the Intermediate Challenge’s other follow-on round, the European Kangaroo, 135 QE boys from Years 9 to 11 took part, of whom 41 were awarded merit certificates. The Kangaroo’s high scorers in each year group were: Jamie Watkin-Rees (Year 11 – the second consecutive year that he has come top of his year group in this competition); Tanishq Mehta (Year 10), and Beuran Kannan (Year 9). Tanishq said he particularly enjoyed the “logical aspect of the questions”.

This is the 16th year that the UKMT has run the International Mathematical Olympiad and Kangaroo contests. The latter is promoted by Kangourou sans Frontières, an independent association promoting Mathematics among young people around the world: its name reflects the fact that the organisation was inspired by the Australian Mathematics Trust.

Three million students worldwide take part in the Kangaroo, usually including around 5,500 pupils invited to take part after sitting the UK Intermediate Challenge.

The QE entrants in this year’s UK Chemistry Olympiad have acquitted themselves well in the first round, according to the published results.

All 11 of the Year 13 boys chosen to enter the competition were awarded either a gold, silver or bronze certificate. Nationally, of the 6,500-plus pupils who participated, only the top 8% received gold, with 25% achieving silver and 31% bronze – and nearly 40% received no award at all. By contrast, QE’s boys gained four golds, six silvers and one bronze between them.

Chemistry teacher Elizabeth Kuo said: “By any reckoning, our sixth-formers did very well in what is a deliberately challenging national competition. The questions set are very hard, but they provide the boys with an excellent opportunity to practise such difficult application-type questions.”

Round 1 consisted of a two-hour written paper set by the Royal Society of Chemistry.
Gold awards went to Aneesh Chopada, Milan Hirji, Showgo Kimura and Michael Takla.
Abhishek Balkrishna, Abbeykeith Kugasenanchettiar, Pranav Santhosh Kumar, Karthigan Sriranganathan, Mohit Vijayakumar and Abhinav Vudathu achieved silver, while Milun Nair was awarded a bronze.

A QE Sixth Form team has been praised by independent judges after designing a robotic machine to tackle one of the major causes of long-term injury in the construction industry.

The four AS-level Technology students’ ingenious solution to the problem of transporting large sheets of material up staircases on construction sites was a robot with rubber caterpillar tracks.

The project was Highly Commended in the Contribution to the Business Award at the Celebration and Assessment Day of the Engineering Excellence Scheme (EES).

Their success follows the recent triumph of a team of younger QE boys who won a world title at the Vex IQ Challenge international robotics finals in the US.

Congratulating the sixth-formers, QE Technology teacher Tony Green said: “The EES assessors were really impressed with our boys’ ideas, praising their ‘great analysis of the existing Health & Safety issues and how they were solved by the solution’, as well as their ‘excellent application of a suitable mechanism’.” The judges lauded the team for differentiating their solution from existing robotic aids that are already available to move materials up staircases.

The EES, said Mr Green, is not a competition – the projects involved are too diverse for that – but the Contribution to the Business Award does allow the assessors to celebrate particularly strong project ideas.

The scheme pairs teams of senior pupils up with industry mentors. It aims to give them opportunities to experience the challenge of a career in Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM) and the fulfilment that such careers can bring.

QE teamed up with construction company Morgan Lovell: Alex Woods, the firm’s Health and Safety Manager, and Delores Salgado, a Health and Safety Executive, served as mentors and provided the QE boys with a real-world engineering problem for them to resolve during the six-month project. Nathan Aderogba, Pranavan Gunaseelan, Chaitra Kawathekar and Kayman Krishnamohan were tasked with designing and testing a prototype that could autonomously or semi-autonomously lift large materials up flights of stairs.

As part of their detailed research, the boys went on site visits to familiarise themselves with construction sites and see at first-hand the issues involved in lifting materials such as sheets of plasterboard, doors and windows up staircases.

The team looked at existing industrial equipment used for transporting large items both on level floors and on stairs. They studied staircase building regulations and standard sheet material dimensions and investigated various types of wheels, as well as different configurations for caterpillar tracks.

Based on the results of this research, the boys held a brainstorming process in which several ideas were examined and then rejected, before they eventually chose and developed a design which involved sheets being clamped on to a carrying tray located on a turntable. This allowed sheets to be carried vertically, for narrower spaces, but also horizontally, giving greater stability. It used rubber caterpillar tracks, which not only provide good grip but also avoid damage to floors. The boys used kit robotics components from VEX Robotics. None had had previous experience of either programming or robotics.

They built a one-third-sized prototype, testing it on a similarly sized rig that included a miniature staircase. They presented this at the Celebration and Assessment Day, for which they were also required to:

• Prepare a full technical and business report
• Exhibit their project work
• Deliver a comprehensive 15-minute presentation on their solution to the panel of volunteer assessors sourced from local industry
• Respond to 10–15 minutes of detailed questioning by the assessing panel.

As a result of their successful participation in the scheme and the assessment day, the four boys were recognised as having graduated as Industrial Cadets at gold level.

Queen Elizabeth’s School has won a national online Mathematics competition, beating off the challenge of hundreds of other schools.

The winning team, made up of four sixth-formers, dropped just one point in the eight rounds of the University of Manchester’s MathsBombe, scoring 119 points out of a possible 120.

Headmaster Neil Enright: “My congratulations go to this team on an almost perfect performance. The competition attracted a large field of teams from leading schools across the state and the independent sectors, and it demanded both speed and deep mathematical understanding. This victory therefore represents a considerable achievement.”

The winning team comprised Year 12 pupils Bashmy Basheer, Kishan Patel, Nico Puthu and Niam Vaishnav. Notwithstanding the team’s name, maiNlyNiam, Kishan was the captain.

Organised by the university’s Mathematics department and supported by the Dame Kathleen Ollerenshaw Trust (a charity named after a mathematician and Lord Mayor of Manchester, who died in 2014 aged 101), the competition attracted entries from more than 600 schools.

From January, every two weeks a new set of problem was released online. The puzzles spanned the whole spectrum, from logic puzzles in pure Mathematics to applications of Mathematics in real-world settings.

The maximum 15 points were available to the first team to solve the problem and to other teams solving it within an hour of the first team. Other points were awarded on a sliding scale, depending on the time taken to solve each problem. The rules forbade any assistance from teachers and also prohibited collaboration between teams.

An online leaderboard enabled teams to keep track of their progress throughout the duration of the event. Kishan said this proved to be a spur to his team’s success: “The competition from the other teams encouraged us to answer the questions as quickly as possible.” Niam added that the four friends had enjoyed the opportunity to tackle challenging problems that differed from those they normally faced in the classroom.

Other teams entered by QE also performed creditably, with one, BombVoyage, taking 43rd place, having solved six of the eight puzzles and scored 70 points.

---

Here is an example of one of the problems, with the solution below:

Grobnog the Goblin King was sitting on his throne consulting with Torqmaga the Inquisitor. “Your Majesty, we’ve been infiltrated by a rogue group of Goblins,” said Torqmaga. “They call themselves Nilbogs. Physically they are identical to Goblins, but – unlike true Goblins – they always tell the truth.”

“Our whole society is founded on Goblins being evil and lying whenever they can!” said Grobnog. “We need to identify these interlopers!”

Torqmaga handed over a piece of paper. “I’ve tortured all of your subjects to find out who is a Goblin and who is a Nilbog. I can assure you that under my questioning, everybody was true to their real nature: every Nilbog told the truth and every Goblin lied.”

Grobnog inspected the list. “What does ‘or’ mean here? Does it mean ‘one or the other or both’?” he asked.

Torqmaga nodded. “Yes, your Majesty, it’s the logical meaning of the word ‘or’. It seems that torture turns Goblins and Nilbogs into very logical monsters. I’m sure you can work out from their statements below who is a Goblin and who is a Nilbog.”

Agmiz “Fragdag would definitely say that I’m a Goblin.”
Bord “Exactly one of Iz and Molk is a Nilbog.”
Cherguff “Those good-for-nothing layabouts Dolk and Lold are the same type of monster as Molk.”
Dolk “Stop the torture! Bord and Yobblot are both Nilbogs or both Goblins!”
Erkaz “I may hate his guts, but Toxplok and I are the same type of monster.”
Fragdag “Quonk and Xinik are Nilbogs.”
Gneeg “Zisbut and I are different types of monster.”
Hrunk “Gneeg is most definitely a Goblin.”
Iz “Molk is a Nilbog and deserves everything Grobnog will do to him.”
Jop “Bord would say that Fragdag is a Nilbog.”
Klaatak “Lold is a traitorous Nilbog!”
Lold “Ronx is a loyal Goblin! Will you let me off the rack now?”
Molk “Erkaz never tells me the truth, she’s a typical Goblin.”
Norbet “All I’ll say is that Wizmok is a Goblin or Zisbut is a Nilbog.”
Oinq “Agmiz and Quonk are loyal to Grobnog! They’re both Goblins!”
Plegkurk “Dolk and Hrunk are either both Nilbogs or both Goblins.”
Quonk “Oinq, if he ever stopped eating, would say that I’m a Nilbog.”
Ronx “Xinik and Bord are both evil Nilbogs.”
Squee “Lold is a typical Goblin – he owes me 200 silver pennies!”
Toxplok “That little toerag Cherguff would say I’m a Nilbog.”
Udonk “Iz would say that Ronx was a Goblin.”
Vuird “Ronx would say that Udonk is a Nilbog.”
Wizmok “What can I say? Iz is a Nilbog or Norbet is a Goblin. Will that do?”
Xinik “I know that if you ask Ronx then he’d say Squee is a Nilbog.”
Yobblot “Klaatak and Squee are both Goblins.”
Zisbut “Hrunk is a goblin — the most disgusting I’ve ever met.”

Your task is to work out which of the 26 monsters above are goblins and which are nilbogs.
Enter your answer as a sequence of 26 letters: G (for Goblin), N (for Nilbog) arranged in the order of the 26 goblins/nilbogs listed above. If you think that Agmiz is a Nilbog, Bord is a Nilbog, Cherguff is a Goblin, Dolk is a Nilbog, …, Zisbut is a Goblin then you should enter your answer as NNGN…G.

---

Solution:

Refer to each Goblin or Nilbog by the first letter of its name. If a monster is a Goblin then we’ll write that it always lies; if the monster is a Nilbog then we’ll write that it tells the truth. By saying two monsters are the same we mean that they are either both Goblins or both Nilbogs.

The clues are then:
A: F says A always lies
B: Exactly one of I, M tells the truth
C: D and L are the same as M
D: B = Y
E: T = E
F: X and Q tells the truth
G: Z != G
H: G always lies
I: M tells the truth
J: B says F tells the truth
K: L tells the truth
L: R always lies
M: E always lies
N: W always lies or Z tells the truth
O: A and Q both always lie
P: D = H
Q: O would say Q tells the truth
R: X and B both tell the truth
S: L always lies
T: C would say T tells the truth
U: I would say R always lies
V: R would say U tells the truth
W: I tells the truth or N lies
X: R would say S tells the truth
Y: K and S both always lie
Z: H always lies

1. Consider clue I. If I is telling the truth then M always tells the truth. If I is lying then M is lying. Hence I = M (but we don’t know whether they both lie or both tell the truth).
2. Clue B says that I != M. Hence B is lying.
3. Clue R says that B tells the truth. Hence R must be lying. (Note that we can’t say anything about X from clue R.)
4. Clue L says that L must be telling the truth. Hence K is also telling the truth (K’s clue) and S is lying (S’s clue).
5. Clue Y says that both K and S both lie. But K tells the truth. So Y is lying. As both B and Y are lying, Clue D is true; hence D tells the truth.
6. Consider clue X. Suppose that X lies. If X is lying then R would actually say that S lies. We know that R lies, this would actually mean that S tells the truth. But we know S lies, so our assumption that X lies is wrong. Hence X tells the truth.
7. Consider clue F. Suppose that F is telling the truth. Then clue F tells us that X tells the truth (we already knew this) and Q tells the truth. Clue Q then tells us that O would say that Q is telling the truth (which indeed Q is), so O must also be telling the truth. Clue O tells us that both A and Q both lie. But this contradicts the fact that we’ve just argued that Q is telling the truth. Hence our assumption that F is telling the truth is wrong, so F must be lying.
8. As F is lying, it’s not true that both X and Q tell the truth. We know that X does tell the truth. So this tells us that Q must be lying.
9. Knowing that Q is lying, clue Q tells us that O would actually say that Q lies. This is indeed the case, hence O is telling the truth.
10. Clue O now tells us that A lies.
11. Consider Clue J. We know B lies. As F lies, B would indeed say that F told the truth. Hence J is making a true statement, so is telling the truth.
12. Consider Clue M. We’ll consider the two cases (M tells the truth, M lies) separately. First suppose that M tells the truth. Then E must lie. Clue E says that T and E are different, hence T must tell the truth. Now consider the other case where M lies. In this case, clue M says that E is telling the truth; it then follows from clue E that T is also telling the truth. Hence, no matter whether M is telling the truth or lying, we must have that T is telling the truth.
13. Clue T tells us that C is making a true statement. Hence C tells the truth.
14. Clue C tells us that M is the same as D and L (who are both telling the truth). Hence M is telling the truth. Clue M then tells us that E is lying.
15. Clue I is making a true statement about M. Hence I tells the truth.
16. Consider clue U. Monster I tells the truth, and R does indeed lie. Hence U is telling the truth.
17. Consider clue V. Suppose V tells the truth. Then R would indeed say that U tells the truth. We know that R lies, so this would mean that U lies. But U tells the truth, a contradiction. Hence V must lie.
18. Consider clue Z. Suppose Z tells the truth. Then H lies. Clue H then tells us that G tells the truth. Clue G tells us that Z and G are different. But we’ve just argued that both Z and G tell the truth, a contradiction. Hence Z must lie.
19. Clue Z then tells us that H tells the truth.
20. Clue H then tells us that G lies. (Just to check: G lies, so clue G tells us that both Z and G are the same, which indeed they are.)
21. As both D and H tell the truth, clue P implies that P tells the truth.
22. Consider clue W. Suppose W always lies. Then clue W tells us that monster I always lies and N tells the truth. But we already know that monster I tells the truth, a contradiction. Hence W must tell the truth. (Note that, even though we know W tells the truth, clue W doesn’t tell us anything about whether N lies or not.)
23. Finally, consider clue N. If N is telling the truth then either W lies or Z tells the truth. But W tells the truth and Z lies, so neither of these possibilities can happen. Hence N must be lying.
Hence (denoting T for ‘telling the truth’ and L for ‘lying’) we can assign

ABCDEFGHIJKLM NOPQRSTUVWXYZ
LLTTLLLTTTTTT LTTLLLTTLTTLL

Reverting back to ‘Goblins always lie’ and ‘Nilbogs always tell the truth’ this gives

ABCDEFGHIJKLM NOPQRSTUVWXYZ
GGNNGGGNNNNNN GNNGGGNNGNNGG

so the required answer is GGNNGGGNNNNNNGNNGGGNNGNNGG