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Rising to the challenge: QE’s chemists show their mettle

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.

QE has won first prize in the Chemistry Challenge – a regional competition run by the Royal Society of Chemistry.

The team of four Year 10 boys attended the final at Kingston University and, said QE Chemistry teacher Susanna Butterworth, they achieved a “resounding victory” over the other three finalists.

“Their engagement, enthusiasm and the way in which they worked as a team were impressive and they made me very proud,” said Dr Butterworth.

The team comprised Alex Beard, Alejandro Lynch-Gonzalez, Bhiramah Rammanohar and Vincent Tang.

Their engagement, enthusiasm and the way in which they worked as a team were impressive and they made me very proud

They were invited to the final after previously qualifying with the highest score in the first round, which was held over two lunchtimes in the Autumn Term, with the answers submitted by post.

In the final in the university’s Chemistry laboratories, the boys successfully completed four exercises – two practical and two written – to produce the highest score of the day. The practicals involved an acid/base titration and iodometric analysis, while the written section comprised a quiz about lanthanides (the 15 metallic chemical elements with atomic numbers 57 to 71) and a multiple-choice test.

The South East regional competition is designed to test teams’ chemical and general knowledge, their ingenuity, their practical laboratory skills and their ability to work together.

The other finalists were Headington School from Oxford, Tonbridge School from Kent and Glenthorne High School from Sutton.