Congratulations to Nisha Hare (Year 10) who was selected as Oxford High School ‘Y9 Scientist of the Year (2011)’. Nisha represented the school at an award ceremony at the beginning of November. Another girl in Year 13 attended a similar ceremony becoming Oxford High School’s ‘Chemist of the Year’; she is currently applying for Natural Sciences at Cambridge.
In the summer our AS students competed in the Cambridge Chemistry Challenge. Seventeen students took part; both Jennifer Collister and another girl in Year 13 were particularly successful gaining a Silver award, with most others gaining Copper awards.
Congratulations to Emma Long, Mairead Rae and Emily Davenport who all successfully obtained places at this year’s residential ‘Salters’ Chemistry camps at a variety of Universities across the country. These courses involve groups of 50 students doing lots of exciting chemistry experiments.
The current ‘Chemist of the Term’ award for students who have made excellent contributions in class were awarded to Maja Donaldson, Alice Limb and Nisha Hare.
A liaison project on the topic of AIR is organised by the junior and senior science departments. All new year 6 students spend a morning in the laboratories of the senior department with some producing poster presentations for display at the start of the autumn term.
Four OHS students Anna Hausel, Phillipa Duckett, Annie Hart and Caitlin Fooks all took part in a Science Activity day at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratories.
Heather Tough, Katherine Klemperer, Sophie Teall and Ella Wilson, all participated in the ‘Salters’ Chemistry Challenge at Oxford University. They did extremely well competing against 11 other schools and came second in one of the competitions; they then attended an exciting Chemistry lecture.
A team of six students Nisha Hare, Jemima Gasson, Charithra Chandran, Helene Greenwood, Ella Recher and Ruth Warner all took part in a Science Activity day at Oxford University’s Chemistry and Materials department.
Congratulations also go to one of our Year 11 students who won the iChemE Science essay competition. Over 100 students took part and Georgina came first (also winning £50 worth of Amazon vouchers)
Year 8 recently enjoyed a trip to the Science Museum in Birmingham (‘Think-tank’). The 3D IMAX presentation on ‘Bugs’ was very informative and the girls enjoyed the Palaeontology. They were also able to take their own fingerprints and do a forensic science workshop to investigate a theft.
Every year, chemists compete in the International Chemistry Olympiad (run in January) in which several students in the past have obtained excellent results, ranking amongst some of the best students in the country. This year we had a record entry of eighteen students (many from year 12). There were some excellent performances including Lynn Zheng and Poppy Mallinson who received Gold and Silver respectively.