Chemistry Olympiad Medals Galore!

16,216 students from 1502 schools sat the UK Chemistry Olympiad – even more than the 14,915 students from 1025 schools in 2024.  36 of them were from Caterham and sat the 2-hour challenging paper in the Rudd Hall that raining January afternoon.

The Olympiad paper included questions on radioactive decay, epoxides, the iodination of ketones, carbon nanotubes and Raman spectroscopy.  It makes A-level question papers seem easy in comparison, giving students the confidence that they can attempt any A-level chemistry question and do very well.  Famous, at least in chemistry circles, for its challenging, but intriguing questions, the Olympiad didn’t disappoint this year with one question starting ‘While Charlie XCX’s Brat summer of 2024 may be over, this summer will be Paddington’s BrAt Bear Summer. Much like Brat summer, the compound BrAt doesn’t last forever. This is due to the radioactive decay of astatine.’

No matter how well they score, the candidates enjoy the challenge and the quirky questions, giving them a fresh look at non-specification chemistry.

The paper is set as a challenge to Upper Sixth pupils, so it was very pleasing to see so many Lower Sixth and Fifth Year participate this year.

The results were published this week.

The top 8.2% of all entrants are awarded a Gold certificate, so it was very pleasing to gain 4 Golds – high praise to Aidan, Joel and Kayla of the Upper Sixth and extra special praise to Jonathan of the Lower Sixth (a most impressive achievement for a student who has studied so little chemistry).

The next 25% of the entrants were awarded a Silver Award. Thirteen of our students were in this category, 7 of whom were L6 students and 2 of whom were 5th year.  A great achievement to all but especially to Oliver and Cato of the 5th year.

A further 15 of our students scored an extremely creditable Bronze Award in this great competition.

It is not easy to achieve an Award in this competition, with only 62% of all entrants receiving a certificate.  All of our students did extremely well and should be proud of their achievements in what is the most rigorous chemistry challenge for school students.  Well done to all.