The Science Department at Ratcliffe College is proud to announce yet another outstanding achievement of four of our Year 8 Science students who took part in the Festival of Chemistry competition, run by the Salters Group on the 7th June 2018 at Leicester University.
The students were Eleni Malhan, Joshua Lee, George Binnie and Victoria Wheatley. The competition this year was described as the most challenging ever set by the University and there were fifteen other Independent schools and Academies from all over the East Midlands area taking part. The students were set the challenge of using only barium chloride solution, dilute sulphuric acid and copper carbonate solid to make a moist white solid, a blue solution, black powder, a blue solid and a dry white solid. The Ratcliffe students drew upon their broad Science knowledge and worked effectively as a team, conducting lots of different experiments, which resulted in them gaining 2nd place in the University competition.
Principal judge, Dr Emma Lampard, described their team work as fantastic and their methods as exceptionally detailed. Dr. Lampard praised the students further by referring to the fact that they had done all of this as a team of 3 and not as a team of 4 because one of the students had gone home ill. Dr Standen, who accompanied the students, was effusive in his praise of the students saying, “this is a wonderful achievement by the Year 8 students who really worked hard to apply their Science knowledge to achieve their outcome. They should be congratulated for their efforts especially since they beat 13 other teams of 4 students as a team of 3 students.”