Tokyo 2020? Forget about it! These Olympiads are showing all of the skills needed to be a top scientist in the future!

The STEM Olympics has been created by the City of Stoke-on-Trent Sixth Form College and ran for the last few years now. The event sees year 10 students from local feeder schools attend the STEM Olympics for a full day of immersive and challenging sessions within STEM. A total of six teams of budding scientists arrived ready to fly their flags proudly for their schools as their problem solving, team working and science abilities were thoroughly put to the test! 

Amongst the schools attending were Clayton Hall Academy, Excel Academy, Ormiston Sir Stanley Matthews Academy, St Peter’s Academy, Trentham High School and Thistley Hough Academy who would each participate in four science masterclasses plus a maths quiz throughout the day in a bid to gain the most points and take home the coveted STEM Olympics Trophy. 

The day started off ‘swimmingly’ as teams designed a floating barge to see which can hold the most amount of weight without sinking in their ‘Sink or Swim’ Physics masterclass. Things then started to heat up in the ‘Gas Generation’ Chemistry masterclass as students set up their own experiments to test the rate of reaction of different gases. Bringing the temperature back down, teams then took part in an autopsy to identify key body organs during their ‘Post Mortem’ Biology masterclass, and bring the masterclasses to a close, students turned their hands to gold digging… quite literally as they had to develop the most efficient and cost effective way to extract gold ore in their ‘Gold Rush’ Geology masterclass.

At the end of each session, the teams were awarded points for 1st to 6th place which would then be added up for a grand total at the end of the day. 

Amid all of this excitement, students were also tasked with completing a Maths Quiz, which asked a variety of challenging questions based around problem solving to really test their team working and skills and initiative. Once again the highest scoring teams would be awarded points towards their overall totals. 

As the day drew to a close, the excitement grew as each team waited anxiously to find out who would be returning back to school as the 2020 champions? Various awards were handed out at the presentation for individual efforts as well as team prizes, and despite each team performing outstandingly, there could only be one overall winner. After gaining the highest score in 3 out of the 4 masterclasses the formidable Trentham High School were crowned the 2020 STEM Olympics Champions.