Chemistry Olympiad

Hymers students shine once again at the Chemistry Olympiad!

The Royal Society of Chemistry's Olympiad Competition is an extremely testing written examination.

This year five Year 13 students answered questions on:

• rocket fuels, including the chemistry of the preparations to colonise Mars;

• electronegativity, bonding and structure, including the pioneering work of Linus Pauling, as well as van Arkel-Ketelaar triangles;

• the acid-base and complexometric properties of amino acids;

• vaping, including the chemistry of Vaping Associated Lung Injury (VALI)

• cheese, including the chemistry of controlling the bubble size in Emmental.

Mohammed H was awarded a Silver Certificate, and Matthew A, Zain A, Kushal K and Joel W achieved Gold Certificates. Four Golds in a single year equals the best ever performance by Hymers. Kushal was placed 10th nationally (11838 entries, roughly 60000 studying A Level Chemistry), and qualified for a gruelling and stimulating training and selection camp at the University of Nottingham (lectures and laboratory work plus a 4 hour written examination and a 4 hour practical examination), where he narrowly failed to be selected for the UK team for the international final in Zurich in July.

“The Chemistry Department is thrilled at, and very proud of, these magnificent achievements, and they represent appropriate recognition at national level of outstanding students of academic chemistry. In 40 years (bar 11 weeks) of teaching, no student I have worked with has matched, let alone exceeded, the speed, accuracy, flair and intuitive feel for correct chemistry of either Kushal or Matthew. Well done!”

— Mr G Prescott

For any former students and scientific parents interested by the problems the question paper contains, please see the pdf here.