Five Upper Sixth Chemists travelled to Cambridge to take part in the annual ChemRace competition. This involves answering Olympiad standard questions in a quick-fire format. In what seems to have been an adrenaline filled 2 hours (teachers are not allowed to be present during the actual competition, we only have the pupils’ word about excitement levels), the team secured 2nd place overall out of over 80 teams. In doing so, they beat local teams from City of London School, St Paul’s, Dulwich, UCS, and Latymer Upper School. Congratulations to the team, consisting of Dawei (SFC1), Victor (SFH2), Boran (SFH1), Zakariya (SFM3) and Oliver (SFM3).
“On Saturday 1 February, Year 13 chemists competed in the 6th annual Chemistry Race, at the Cambridge Department of Chemistry. Dubbed “Fission Impossible”, the team consisted of five Habs Chemistry students – academic weapon Oliver, soon-to-be Cambridge medic Zakariya, maths aficionado Victor, flagship chemist Boran, as well as Dawei who finally had a chance to flex all his time spent drawing organic chemistry structures in the battlefield.
After placing 7th in last year’s ChemRace and narrowly missing out on the coveted ChemRace-branded “beaker mugs”, this year Oliver was out for retribution. With talks of some teams running rigorous selection processes involving up to 150 students, the three of us who had received a message from Dawei and Oliver two weeks prior, asking if we wanted to take part in some competition that we had never heard of, were starting to feel a little out of our depth. After accidentally walking into a Cambridge lecture, the team managed to overcome the first hurdle of successfully assembling all five members.
Chemistry Race is exactly that – a race, both mentally and physically. Teams compete to answer as many challenging chemistry questions as they can in 120 minutes. At the start, we are given six questions to freely distribute between ourselves. Submitting an answer involves running down the lecture theatre (which probably raises some health and safety concerns) to an army of ChemRace volunteers who mark it. Answering correctly unlocks a new question, whilst answering incorrectly reduces the marks available for the current question.
We got off to a very strong start, racking up a top three position within the first 10 minutes. To say time flew by would be an understatement, as we looked up for the first time to find an hour had already passed. We entered the last 30 minutes of the competition in an impressive 4th place, 10 points behind a podium finish. The organisers then turned off the live leaderboard we had been consulting between questions, and a mad dash to the finish began.
Special mention must be given to Zakariya, Oliver and Dawei who seemed to find a second wind and continued submitting questions until the very last second, keeping Boran and Victor very busy delivering their submissions to be marked.
After a late lunch break, we piled back into the lecture theatre to await the results. Tensions were high and bonds were strained. As the teams were read out, one by one, the name Fission Impossible was worryingly nowhere to be heard, inciting murmurs among some that maybe our lunchtime predictions of a top six finish were slightly optimistic.
Top three and top two – tied for points. A collective exhale echoed throughout the hall. The ChemRace organisers explained that the tiebreaker was calculated by which team had answered a ‘more difficult’ question. This put Bond Squad from Dulwich College in 3rd, and in 2nd place… Fission Impossible.
In the end, a truly special day, with Habs bringing a Chemistry race trophy to Elstree for the first time, and the team going home with their prized Chemistry Race mugs.
Special mention goes to Saaj (SFR1) and Rian (SFM1), who competed alongside three students from the Habs Girls’ School, finishing a commendable 31st out of 60 teams in a competition aimed at Upper Sixth – it seems this outgoing cohort leaves the trophy defence in very capable hands and we cannot wait to see how they get on next year.
Finally, a huge thank you goes out to Dr Chapman, who gave up his Saturday to be with us in Cambridge, and Dawei, who was the mind behind the madness of organising and getting the team ready.”
Related posts
See all posts
