Girls from twelve London schools came together this week for our St Helen’s Physics Tournament, held in our state-of-the-art STEM Centre on International Women’s Day, to encourage more girls to take up A Level Physics.
By creating experiments, planning and adapting their methods, and testing their mathematical, teamwork and quick thinking skills, girls developed the skills required for A Level sciences and came away from the day inspired to consider Physics as an option in their future studies.
Students also attended a careers talk with Dr Jess Wade, an Imperial College Research Fellow who has worked tirelessly to promote women in science. Every day for two years, Dr Wade wrote a Wikipedia entry about a female scientist. As well as being an expert in plastic electronics, she is also the BBC’s go-to scientist for gender equality issues. We are so grateful to Dr Wade for talking to the girls about the possibilities Physics can provide in their career options.
And not forgetting the escape room, a timed challenged where students solved physics-based puzzles to unlock boxes and get a final password to escape the lab.
And the winning school team were… Francis Holland Sloane Square. Well done girls!
St Helen’s team of Year 10s included Aishani, Ishani, Julia, and Abinaya and were chosen after the House Physics competition in November, which included one member of each House’s winning team. Sixth Formers Rhea and Bhairavi, helped Ms Wise co-ordinate the day and did a fantastic job of ensuring everyone was engaged with the experiments.
Thank you to everyone who took part, including students and teachers from Haydon School, The Harefield Academy, Bishop Ramsey School, Westfield Academy, Hatch End High School, Notting Hill and Ealing High School, St Margaret’s School, Hampstead School, Kew House School, Haberdashers’ Girls School, and Francis Holland School. The girls were so polite, enthusiastic, resilient and excellent physicists!
