On November 10th, a team of four students (two from Year 9, one from Year 10 and one from Year 11) took part in the Top of the Bench Regional Chemistry competition, which took place online this year.  The competition, run by the Royal Society of Chemistry, has been running for 20 years and challenges students aged 14–16 to put their practical and teamwork skills into action. Here’s Year 11’s Tara’s report:

By Tara A-H, Year 11 

While it would be great to blame the organiser for giving us the unluckiest number, 13,  I accept that the questions were challenging and of course, answered by the best problem-solvers of our generation. These questions are extremely important and great to use not only as practice for exams, but also to enlighten oneself about the world, and the chemical aspects to it. The elements in the air, the particles, the strong bonds – these are all the tiniest things that make up not just us, but the world we live in, and forces that act on us all. 

This competition wasn’t solely based on Chemistry: forces from physics were incorporated, geology from our biological knowledge, and of course the majority was our chemical understanding of certain topics. We were tested on our comprehension of the Periodic Table, Electrolysis and identification of certain substances with the results of the tests that were run. For example, we were told to identify the halide ions in substances A, B and C. When each sample was tested with silver nitrate, we were able to recognise that the colour of the precipitates was the giveaway for each substance. Therefore, the bromide ion in whichever substance was what caused a precipitate to form that was cream in colour, while the chloride ion influenced a white coloured precipitate, and the iodide ion that was the cause of our yellow precipitate.

The competition was intense, but extremely fun and exciting. It gave us Notting Hill girls a chance to bond with each other from different year groups and to be able to ask each other, especially the younger years, when unsure on a certain topic. Unfortunately, we did not win, but a huge congratulations to the team that did. They were a group of teens who were able to both memorise and apply knowledge to the set of questions that were presented by The Royal Society of Chemistry. 

Towards the end of the competition when we were awaiting results, the RSC held a fun Kahoot Quiz, which we came out to be second when shown on the upcoming leaderboard. It was a huge amount of relief and excitement to see our school’s name pop up on the leaderboard, and be mentioned a couple of times by the person managing the competition. Thank you for this amazing opportunity, which I have learned a lot from.