Chemistry Week 2025

Monday 10th November, saw the start of Chemistry Week. We hosted a range of activities throughout the week, starting with a chemistry take on the popular Taskmaster programme, in Prayers.

Conceived and coordinated by Dr Anscombe and presented by Dr Leonard and Mr Gill, four non-chemistry staff completed a series of chemistry tasks for the coveted golden Bunsen burner trophy. Our thanks go to the contestants, Dr Sherwood, Ms Schneider, and Dr Whelan. Congratulations go to Mrs Roca-Aguilera, the overall winner.

Throughout the week, a chemistry-themed Treasure Hunt was laid out around the Lower School Quad. Sixteen chemistry clues led to sixteen letters, which, when unscrambled, revealed the name of a famous scientist. Several LC classes completed the challenge, but Chim and Alexandra (LC2) were the first to discover Rosalind Franklin.

On Wednesday, at lunchtime, three members of the department, Dr Bagley, Dr Foster and Dr Anscombe, presented aspects of their doctoral research to an audience of UC and SFC students. A packed lab heard about virus-detecting nappies, self-assembling molecules and the powerful technique of X-Ray Crystallography.

Finally, we hosted Emily Norman, a research scientist from Vernalis in Cambridge. Emily shared with the audience the fascinating and intricate experiments she does every day to validate the activity of potential new pharmaceutical drugs. She also took us on an exploration of ADME and how she could use isolated cellular systems to predict where a drug might end up in a human body. Many of the students had questions and stayed around after the presentation to talk to Emily, and look at the equipment she had brought along. We would like to thank Dr Foster and Katya (SFC) for hosting the talk.

The department would also like to thank the Chemistry Reps, Izzy, Hannah, Emily, Nancy and Bernice (SFC) for their support with Prayers and to Izzy and Ann (SFC) for decorating the department's blackboard and whiteboard.

Dr Starkey, Teacher of Chemistry