Top of the Bench

The annual Glasgow and West of Scotland region Royal Society of Chemistry Top of the Bench competition was held on the evening of Tuesday 12th November at the Ayr Campus of the University of the West of Scotland.

The competition was held simultaneously, through a live video link, with schools from Glasgow at the University of Strathclyde. We arrived to a very welcome array of drinks and snacks which were much enjoyed by all.

A total of 30 schools took part across the two venues. Four of our top performing Chemists from S2-S4 represented Wallace Hall: Matthew Johnstone (S4), Priya Rome, Gracie Rae (both S3) and Andrew Hastings (S2).

The competition consisted of two rounds, each testing different aspects of both Chemistry and scientific literacy. The first round required the teams to find 10 Chemistry related words in a big word search (without a list of words to find!), which they then had to put into a poem. The second round required the teams to correctly match up 20 pictures of common chemicals with their names and uses. This round was extremely challenging but the Wallace Hall team made an excellent attempt at it.

The whole evening was thoroughly enjoyed by all the teams and it was lovely to see our students working together as a team in a pressurised competition environment. Although the Wallace Hall team weren’t among the top prize-winners, they were delighted with how they performed. Thanks to the event organisers and well done to everyone who took part.