Year 9 Physics ‘Big Quiz’ 2022
On the 4th of February, twelve Year 9 students had a fantastic day out participating in an annual Physics quiz which was hosted by the prestigious University of Birmingham in their most prized building – the Great Hall. The university also organised a campus tour which enabled us to appreciate the university’s wonderful site and academic life. We offer a huge ‘thank you’ to the university and the organiser Mohammed Ansar who made this event possible.
Several schools took part in this competition and some of the notable ones other than our school included Camp Hill Grammar School for Boys along with other schools that are part of the King Edward Foundation. This meant that there was fierce competition between schools and a tense atmosphere! The competition began with a word-search consisting of questions which tested our general Physics knowledge; students from each school were split into teams, each team consisting of 4 people working together.
The quiz was formed of 5 rounds (of 10 questions each) and the quizmaster was astrophysicist Dr. Rob Smith from the university. There was also a specialist round which focused on astrophysics along with ‘spot prize’ questions which were much more difficult, including questions such as ‘How many nuclear plants are there in the World currently?’ (the answer is 459, by the way). We were also able to play our ‘Joker’ for one of the rounds that we felt confident about and this doubled the points for that round – unfortunately for our team, we failed to make the best use of it!
The first round was on waves and I believe our team did very well as the questions were mostly about the structure and types of wave. The second round asked us about kinematics and was mainly based on calculations such as speed, force, etc but in my opinion, it really was not as daunting as the subject sounded. The third round provided us with clues about something and students had to guess ‘What am I?’ – our team did well on this round.
That round was then followed by a short break and an excellent lecture on the ‘Ultra cool, seven dwarf planets’ which was delivered by Professor Amaury Triaud who discussed different planets and stars in space.
I think it is safe to say that the following round was a complete disaster for not only our team but all the other schools participating as it asked about the names of famous scientists – ‘Who am I?’ However, round 5 focused on ‘materials and particles’ in which our team performed much better. The quiz concluded with the specialist round on astrophysics, about which students were advised to research and prepare for beforehand.
The results were then announced and it is with great delight I can say that our group (Team B) came second place, with Camp Hill Boys (Team A), the reigning champions, coming first place once again. King’s School Worcester (Team A) came 3rd. I would like to show my gratitude to Ismaeel, Yusef and Kaelen, my team members, whose contributions made this achievement possible.
In conclusion, this trip was a great learning experience for all of us as it deepened our knowledge of the wider universe while enabling us to appreciate the importance of physics through the lecture; it was an enjoyable competition and hopefully, next year, our school will to do even better!
Ehan Taseen (9N)
For the record, 49 teams participated in the quiz.
Our three teams totalled points of 51 (Team B), 49 (Team A) and 48 (Team C) so it was very close indeed! All of our students thus performed very well indeed on the day.
Team B: Kaelen Van Vliet, Ehan Taseen, Ismaeel Ali and Yusef Hakim
Team A: Arjun Lyall, Ali Mirza, Manveer Ballagan and Ifrad Amirul
Team C: Pavisan Chandramohan, Jedd Vergara, Hardev Manku and John Wierzbicki
