Report on the Second York Schools Science Quiz

On Thursday 12 March, thirteen schools from in and around York came together for the second York Schools Science Quiz. Twenty two school teams competed along with four teacher teams (put together from the teachers who brought the pupils along from the various schools) for the trophies and prizes. Each team consisted of two Lower Sixth and two Fifth Form pupils or four Fifth Form pupils for those schools without Sixth Forms. The schools represented were Manor CE School, Canon Lee School, The Joseph Rowntree School, Huntington School, Archbishop Holgate’s School, Fulford School, All Saints School, Millthorpe School, St Peter’s School, Bootham School, The Mount School, Selby High School and Scarborough College. The event took place as part of the York ISSP and also the York Schools Ogden Partnership, with a large thank you to the Royal Society of Chemistry and the Institute of Physics for some of the prizes, the Rotary Club of York Vikings for the water bottles and the Ogden Trust for the 8 GB memory sticks and Amazon Voucher prizes.

The quiz was put together and presented by Sarah McKie, who is the Head of Biology at St Peter’s School, and consisted of Biology, Chemistry and Physics rounds alongside an Observation Challenge and a Hitting the Headlines round amongst others. At the end of the quiz the teams waited with bated breath for the results to be announced. It turned out that three teams were tied for second place, so a tie breaker was needed to separate them. The tie breaker question was: What is the distance in miles ‘as the crow flies’ between London and Rome? Pieces of paper were circulated to the three teams concerned and they made their estimates. Team ‘Crick’ from Archbishop Holgate’s School was the closest with 895 miles, with team ‘Hadrons’ from Fulford School being squeezed into overall fourth place.

Schools without sixth forms:

1st Place ‘Millthorpe Lions’ Millthorpe School

2nd Place ‘Let’s get down to Bismuth’ Manor School

3rd Place ‘Perpetual Motion Squad’ Selby High School

Open Competition:

1st Place ‘Watson’ Archbishop Holgate’s School

2nd Place ‘Crick’ Archbishop Holgate’s School

3rd Place ‘McHammer’ St Peter’s School

I was delighted that with the positive support from the schools of York and I hope that the competition continues to grow. Many of the questions were very demanding, the answers from the pupils were impressive and no doubt much science would have been learned on the evening. Congratulations to Archbishop Holgate’s school for eventually picking up both first and second prizes and to Millthorpe School for their success.