RSC Belgium announces its Chemistry Challenge 2014

The RSC Belgium Section is pleased to announce its Schools Chemistry Challenge 2014! This stimulating chemistry competition is open to students from any school in Belgium, so please spread the word to any appropriate educational institutions or organisations that you are involved with. We would like to make the 2014 Challenge bigger and better than ever!

Details of the 2014 competition format can be downloaded here. The questions will be set in English, but may be answered in English, French, Dutch or German.

The competition is open to school students in their penultimate year of High School (usually aged 16 – 17) and consists of a total of two hours of written test papers held in individual schools and designed to demonstrate the participants’ knowledge of chemistry and their ability to think logically.

Two formats

The Challenge can be taken in two ways: either as a single two-hour paper or split into three stand-alone, separate sections (Section A 30 minutes, Section B 60 minutes and Section C 30 minutes) which teachers might find easier to work into their timetable constraints. Teachers would need to decide on their preference by the time they tell us the approximate numbers of students that will participate in the 2014 challenge from their school.

The common curriculum on which the competition will be based can be found here. This has been reviewed and validated by teachers in 2012 and 2013.

The Challenge papers themselves will be distributed to participating schools in May with completed papers to be returned during June.

Past papers

For your information the Schools Chemistry Challenge 2012 and 2013 papers are also available online here and here respectively. This will show you the format for each section, but there will be 100% new questions for 2014!

As ever, very attractive cash prizes are offered, as well as certificates acknowledging participation for all students that take part. From our previous experience we have found that students felt that participation was a valuable ‘plus point’ when completing University application forms, clearly demonstrating an ‘extra curricular’ interest in a science subject.

More information

For further information, please contact our challenge coordinator Rita Woodward or via the usual RSC Belgium email address.