UK Olympiad team selected

Joshua Steadman (Abingdon School), David Edey (Alcester Grammar School), David Wade (Northgate High School), and Ruth Franklin (Manchester High School for Girls) will represent the UK at the finals of the 42nd International Chemistry Olympiad in Tokyo this summer. In gaining their place on the team, the sixthformers have come through a challenging two-round qualifying process run by the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC).

In Round 1, the students did a two-hour written paper at their own school. The 2010 paper consisted of six questions, each made up of several parts, starting with questions on A-level material and gradually getting more difficult as the questions were put in unfamiliar but a real world context. Problem-solving featured strongly in all questions. So, for example, there was a five-part question about salting roads in winter, and another on the uses of halogen fluorides. Over 2000 scripts were returned from 366 secondary schools and colleges - a 12 per cent increase on the number of participants in the previous year.