We are sitting in the University of Birmingham’s Great Hall arguing who will go up if we win the prize. Wait, let’s rewind and begin at the start………

On 25th of January, 12 Yr 9 students were given the opportunity to participate in a ‘Big Physics Quiz’. Here ‘big’ is not an adjective but a noun. I presume the whole idea behind this event was to educate and excite students about Physics who may then consider studying it at university. We left after morning registration. Just before we left, Mr Jones put us in teams of four by himself (which is the second most annoying thing teachers do after a seating plan). I was in a team with people I hardly knew!

We arrived at the University and went into the Great Hall; what we saw was definitely not what we had anticipated. The Hall was full with teams of four crowding around their tables. There were about 45 teams meaning about 15 schools had participated. This, of course, made it harder for us to win but as I was about to find out, the whole experience was worth more than winning or losing. I sat down on my table with my fellow team mates. We started on the word search which we completed while we waited for the other schools to arrive. We solved most of it apart from one question, which made us realise that if you don’t know a lot of questions that’s alright but, if you are only stuck on one question, that is very frustrating. We handed it over none the less because it didn’t contribute to the main quiz.

When all the schools which were going to arrive had done so we began, our hosts introduced themselves and I realised we were in company of some great Physicists. There was someone who leads Birmingham University’s team at the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva comparing the quiz. Without wasting any more time we got cracking; the rules were simple – answer the questions which were read aloud and, after conferring with your team, write down the answer. To give it the extra edge and an element of luck the students were allowed to use a ‘Joker’ once in the whole quiz; this doubled the points for that round.

The first three rounds went badly for us. I think we only got about 50% of the answers right and we had used our joker which, in a sense, meant we had wasted it. It was break time when Mr Jones came over and asked us, “How is it going?” For obvious reasons we all assured him it was going ‘great’. He looked at the empty tables and then told me “It’s a good thing so many schools didn’t come”.  I looked at the refreshments on the vacant table next to us and, picking them up, repeated “It is a good thing!” He told me that he meant there was greater chance of us winning. Of course I knew that!

The second half began with a ‘keynote’ lecture on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). It was delivered by a Physicist working on the experiment. He told us many great things and showed us some very interesting experiments. I think the lecture was probably the best part of the whole trip. There were two more rounds before the specialist LHC round. We actually did very well on these questions, getting 90% of them right.  Then the award ceremony started and we were arguing about who would go up to collect the award when someone (me) suggested that we would probably not win anything anyway; that someone (me) was right!  A King Edward’s School won first prize but the odds were in their favour as there are so many of them!

As far as I’m concerned, and probably other HGS participants too, the trip was definitely worth it.  We had a lot of fun while learning some very important things. Plus, if anyone asks, we made it into the top 40. 😉

Syed Hasnain Gillani    9-Alfred

For the record, participating students were: Faheem Ahmed, Sohail Akhtar, Josef Feiven, Syed Gillani, Jason Lee, Ricky Masih, Hung Nguyen, Rahul Patel, Eesa Rafiq, Amrit Sandhu, Ayyan Sattar and Gaurav Verma.