On Thursday 4th May, Wakefield Girls’ Year 12 Chemistry A-Level students took part in the Royal Society of Chemistry’s Schools’ Analyst Competition. This national competition enables students to demonstrate and expand on their existing chemistry knowledge, skills and aptitude for analytical science through practical experiments based on relevant societal or industrial problems. Wakefield Girls’ have been selected as one of the schools in the North East of England region to host the competition.

In this year’s competition students worked in five teams of three as analytical chemists and were tasked with investigating some unpleasant goings on at the ‘Grand Baking Competition’. The students completed tasks including titration, chromatography and test-tube reactions, to try and decipher who had sabotaged the baking competition.

On completion of their experiments, teams uploaded their results and answered a series of challenging questions. The highest scoring team from Wakefield Girls’ will internally receive House Points, but they will also be entered into the North East region, to see if they scored the highest overall. Results will be announced in the coming weeks.

Thank you to all the Chemistry Department, including our technician Vicky Mitchell, for helping to set up the competition and supervise it and also to Dr Graeme Turnbull at Northumbria University for organising the competition and sending the chemicals and equipment. 

Dr S Duerden-Brown

Head of Chemistry