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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.

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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.

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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

Queen Elizabeth’s School has once again excelled in the British Biology Olympiad, with two sixth-formers reaching the final round, which is open only to the top 16 young biologists in the country.

Year 13 pupils Showgo Kimura and Michael Takla were selected from Round 2 for the four-day finals, a series of practical examinations held at Warwick University.

They were among five QE boys who had qualified for Round 2, with the others being fellow sixth-formers Ilan Elango, Milan Hirji and Simon Rey. The five’s qualification placed them in the top 2 per cent of the 7,818 entrants nationwide.

Last year, QE was crowned the best-performing school in the country in the prestigious Olympiad competition, and although it will not be known until later this year if it has repeated this feat, the School is certainly in a strong position, says Biology teacher Mev Armon: it has amassed a total of 14 gold, 16 silver and 15 bronze medals.

Congratulating Showgo and Michael, Mr Armon said: “They have worked for almost two years, developing additional skills outside of the specification at lunch times. I am very proud of them and of all the boys who were awarded medals.”

After returning from Warwick, the pair reflected on the experience. Their preparation included areas such as botany, gel electrophoresis and locust dissections.

Michael said: “I enjoyed the opportunity to improve my practical skills, learning new lab techniques, and being surrounded by other people who were as interested in Biology as I am. I particularly found a practical on the induction of β–galactosidase in E. coli very interesting because it complemented prior knowledge of the regulation of lac operon expression with experimental evidence.”

Showgo added: “Unlike with School practicals, we weren’t given any extra reagent, even if we had used ours up, and this meant it was important to plan before starting. I realised this too late and had almost finished the blood sample provided on making blood smears when I needed more to complete the rest of the examination.

“Although I made other small mistakes throughout the rest of the practicals, I enjoyed all of them, especially the maggot dissection. In this practical, we had to dissect a maggot of roughly 2cm to find the dorsal vessel (the ‘heart’) and apply several drugs to investigate their effects. At first, I kept damaging the heart, but after a few attempts I improved and was able to do the dissection with ease. I didn’t expect practical exams to be as challenging and interesting as they were and I’m sure the skills I gained from them will continue to be useful as I study Natural Sciences at university.”

Two QE boys who entered an international competition have had their work published in a new book.

Jonathan Ho, of Year 12, and Matt Salomone, of Year 11, drew on inspiration from the Trojan War for the poems they entered in a multi-disciplinary art competition organised by the University of Leicester.

The book, entitled Artefact to Art, was launched at the Annual Conference of the Classics Association in Leicester. During the ceremony, both boys were singled out for a special mention by the organiser of the competition, Dr Naoise Mac Sweeney, who is the university’s Associate Professor in Ancient History.

Headmaster Neil Enright said: “This is wonderful news; my congratulations go to Jonathan and Matt. It is very exciting to have a success such as this in our maturing Classics department. Such competitions provide excellent opportunities for our boys to display their creativity and express themselves.”

Jonathan and Matt received delegate passes, together with their parents, to attend the day, worth £240 per family. The boys, who are particularly keen on myths and have set up their own society at the School, also each received a copy of the book. The boys’ entries were judged by the poet, Dan Simpson, with whom they were photographed at the book launch. The prizes for the winners were given out by the well-known author of the Roman Mysteries series of historical novels for young people, Caroline Lawrence.

The competition, which attracted 200 entries from four continents, required participants to produce a piece of art, whether handicraft or poem, inspired by an ancient artefact. Both Jonathan and Matt chose the black-figured amphora by Exekias from 540 BC, which shows the two friends and heroes of the Trojan War, Ajax and Achilles, playing a board game in full armour.

The pair have recently been looking at Homer with QE’s visiting teacher of Ancient Greek, Dr Corinna Illingworth, who also attended the ceremony. “Every piece of work that was included in the book – whether poem or handicraft- was displayed in a beautifully arranged exhibition,” she said. “The variety of artworks on show was very impressive and it was moving to read what had inspired each young artist.”

She added that the competition, which was open to all pupils of secondary school age, gave the two boys the chance to explore art history, consider mythical literature and practise creative writing.

Jonathan said: “What inspired me was how battles and wars are always manipulated by a few men and this can be seen even in ancient history. One can compare a game of strategy to war.”

Jonathan’s poem:

As the pieces are place, the army is drawn up,
The players focused, the army terrified.
Dim lights are engulfed by darkness,
As the stars in the sky foretell the future.
Who will win? Who will lose?
Only the Fates can see.
As the ground rumbles with the feet of men,
Destiny is made.
However, only one side can emerge victorious,
The other drowned in sorrow and loss.
What will happen next?
Let’s see who wins, then I’ll tell you…

Matt was inspired by similar thoughts: “These famous generals are playing a game together – perhaps a strategic game like chess – which interestingly shows the similarities between a general in war and a leader in a game. There is a clear contrast in the piece, but it also reveals that these two have fewer differences than I first thought.”

Matt’s poem:

The nature of war and the thrill of games
Are no much unlike. A duet of heroes,
Armed and allied, set for any challenge,
Sitting down all the while. Finding peace in a board game.

“Four!” “Three!” Thus, the winner seems evident.
Yet the other does not back off. End has yet to arrive.

Looming, towering, threatening with helm and hand;

Nervously raised foot in response, but the battle ensues
Yet neither leader strikes. For their war attacks the psyche –

Victorious in spirit, soldiers in their fingers,
Strategy in mind, fate in fortune.
Perhaps soon they will take up their shields;
Until then, the real fight is in dice.

QE pupils beat off competition from 30 other schools to win the regional round of the Team Maths Challenge.

The four boys from Years 8 and 9 secured victory over Merchant Taylors’, in second place, and Haberdashers’ Aske’s Boys’, who came third. They now go through to the national finals in London’s Royal Horticultural Halls in June – the third time that a QE team has reached this stage in the prestigious UK Mathematics Trust contest.

Headmaster Neil Enright said: “I congratulate our boys on a resounding success, which demonstrated not only their mathematical prowess and their ability to think clearly under pressure, but also skills in communication and teamwork.”

The team was led by Year 9 pupil Dan Suciu and comprised Shimaq-Ahamed Sakeel Mohamed, also of Year 9, together with Year 8 boys Bhunit Santhiramoulesan and Agrim Sharma. They scored a winning total of 223 points out of 236 in the event, which was hosted by Haberdashers’ Aske’s School for Girls in Elstree.

The competition aims to offer pupils a means of expressing and developing their enjoyment of Mathematics, with problems that are mostly accessible, yet still challenge those with more experience. The event involves four rounds:

• Crossnumber – one pair of contestants is given the ‘across’ clues and the other pair the ‘down’ clues
• Shuttle – pairs solve problems where the answer to the previous question feeds into the next question
• Relay – again working in pairs to solve problems, but also involves movement around the room in a race against the clock
• Group round – working as a team of four to solve ten problems.

Captain Dan said after the event: “We were delighted to win and really pleased that our hard work paid off, especially in the Shuttle Round. We’re all really looking forward to the next round.”