Year 10 News . . . . . .

When I was asked to participate in an inter-school Chemistry competition, I jumped at the chance. Admittedly my motives were based more on the idea of missing a day of school than competing with other chemists, but still, I wasn’t going to miss this.

So I decided to have a go and spent one rather challenging lunchtime twisting my brain around the effects of pH on aspirin as part of the qualifying round. Our team consisted of me, George Parnell, Ben Merritt and Jamie Perrin.

Qualifying round over - we were left waiting anxiously for our results. The test had been hard and we didn’t hold much hope of getting through but somehow we managed it.

As it turned out we came second out of all the schools in the South East. It seems we weren’t the only ones to find the Qualifiers hard !

The winners of the Qualifiers went on to compete in the Nationals and the four runners- up - LOGS, Wilson’s School Croydon, Reigate Grammar and St. Georges School Weybridge - were left to compete in the Regionals.

Within a few weeks, we were taking the train up to Kingston University in London where the regional finals were to be held. We had spent the previous two lessons revising in the library, an effort which later proved invaluable.

We were the first to arrive and were sent to the Canteen to wait for the other teams. We felt somewhat out of place, dressed in our blazers and ties surrounded by university students dressed in casual hoodies and jeans.

Soon our competitors began to trickle in. We were struck by how nerdy they looked and I couldn’t help but wonder how we appeared to them. Did we really look like that ?

Once everyone was there we proceeded to a lab. It was massive, equal to all our school labs put together! Electing George as team captain, we started the competition. There were four activities and each school took turns at each one in a sort of rota system.

One test involved memorizing information about various elements and answering questions on them. Another involved matching six colourless solutions with their appropriate labels.

There was a quiz of 24 general knowledge chemistry questions; two of which - had we not revised - we would never have been able to answer.

By the end, we were feeling quietly optimistic. After some time we were called together. The scores were very close and the winners were tied. First place would go to the team that had achieved the highest marks on most of their challenges.

At this point I knew it would not be us. I was sure that we could not have had the highest marks on more than one of our challenges and was resigned to hope for second place.

So it was with some considerable surprise to hear that we had won ! Both we and St. George’s school had got sixteen and a half points but we had got the highest in two challenges compared to their one.

The Lewes Old Grammar School team pulled through and could now be called the best in the South East. Well done George, Ben, Jamie - and me !

                                                                                            By Roshan Salgado D’Arcy