On Friday 9th November, Upper VI Chemists spent a day as undergraduate students at UCL and on Tuesday 13th November, students took part in the Chilterns and Middlesex Regional Rounds of the Royal Society of Chemistry Competition for the first time.
Having attended a series of lectures on the themes of infrared and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, time-of-flight mass spectrometry and advanced synthetic organic chemistry in the morning, they spent the afternoon in one of the undergraduate teaching laboratories, carrying out one of the A level Required Practicals. Dr Robert Palgrave, Reader in Inorganic and Materials Chemistry, led the afternoon session and the girls were also supported by UCL laboratory technical staff as well as PhD students. At the end of the experiment they were able to analyse their samples using the advanced analytical techniques taught during the morning and the data and traces produced were highly impressive enhancements to their lab reports.
The Royal Society of Chemistry Competition was held at St. BenedictĀs School in Ealing where 15 teams of four pupils from across the region competed for the honour of representing the section at the National Finals. Ella Bloch, Saskia Teeger, Zainab Ahmed and Rose McGowan formed our team and they performed admirably on nine rounds of questions, testing their general knowledge of Chemistry as well as some very specific areas of the GCSE curriculum and beyond. Although we did not finish first, we finished close to the eventual winners Queen ElizabethĀs BoysĀ School in Barnet and will be looking to close the gap next year!
