Once again the East Midlands Top of the Bench Chemistry Competition was a great success. Top of the Bench is a national competition run by the Royal Society of Chemistry for 14-16 year old students.  This year’s regional final, which allows the winning team to enter the national final, consisted of teams of students, two from year 9, one from year 10 and one from year 11 from schools across the region. The University of Derby hosted the event for the first time on Saturday 30th January 2010 under the guidance of Alan-Shaun Wilkinson and opened by Professor John Coyne, the University’s Vice-Chancellor.

This years contest involved a gruelling 30 minute quiz followed by a tough and exciting practical challenge. The aim of the challenge was to try and find out the atomic mass of the object named ‘mysterium.’ The mysterium was actually solid zinc. The team who achieved the greatest accuracy received the most points. Whilst the contestants were having their lunch break they were able to experience a demonstration of making ice-cream with the aid of liquid nitrogen. This was done by two of the University’s scientists, Professor Trevor Brown and Ian Shropshire. The students even got to taste the vanilla flavoured ice cream, which had been made at -196 Celsius. The winning team was chosen by how many questions in the quiz they got right and the most accurate measurement of the atomic mass of the mysterium.  

Congratulations go to Karan Kupur, Jack Ren, Nikhil Dattani-Patel and Jamie Herring from Loughborough Grammar School for winning the regional competition. Special thanks is given to the University of Derby’s Education, Health and Science Faculty, the Derbyshire Educational Business Partnership and STEMNET for without them, the event wouldn’t be possible. Cathy Brown, STEMNET Regional Director for the East Midlands, said: ‘It was great to once again see such enthusiastic students from a wide variety of schools performing high quality scientific investigations under the pressure of a regional competition.’  

Other schools that were involved were Stamford School, Derby High School, Rushy Mead School - Leicester, Ockbrook School - Derbyshire, The Kings School – Grantham, Deincourt Community School – Chesterfield and Nottingham High School.

Article and Picture supplied by: George Peck (Yr7) @ Anthony Gell School, Wirksworth, Derbyshire

A team from Nottingham High School came second in the national Top of the Bench Chemistry Competition. The team was up against stiff competition in a field of 28 schools. All the teams had won regional competitions to qualify. 

So congratulations to the team on their fantastic result and for representing the East Midlands region so successfully! 

The national final of the Royal Society of Chemistry’s Top of the Bench competition was held on 28^th March at the University of Loughborough.

Details of the competition are at http://www.rsc.org/Education/SchoolStudents/totb.asp.  

You can see the full write up on the Nottingham High School website:http://www.nottinghamhigh.co.uk/senior-school/academic-departments/chemistry/rsc-top-of-the-bench-success/

 

Congratulations to Nottingham High School for winning the regional final of the Royal Society of Chemistry’s Top of the Bench Competition. 

The team was up against stiff competition from teams from eleven other East Midlands’ schools who had qualified through county heats. In joint second place were a team from Burleigh Community College and Limehurst High School in Loughbrough and a team from Stamford School. 

The event was held on the 10^th January 2009 at the Chemistry Department of the University of Leicester. Each team comprised 4 students (2 Year 9s, 1 Year 10 and 1 Year 11). The students carried out a practical challenge and a written task in the university labs. I was impressed by how hard they all worked in their teams and their level of chemistry knowledge. I’ve had reports of some exhausted but enthused students on the return journeys. 

The winning team will now go on to the national final of Top of the Bench in the spring and we wish them well as they represent the East Midlands at that event. 

More information about Top of the Bench at http://www.rsc.org/education/schoolstudents/totb.asp