St Helen's School Physics Tournament 2024

On Friday 8th March 2024, Hatch End High School Year 10 Physics Girls' Team participated in a Physics Tournament at St Helen’s School in Northwood to celebrate International Women’s Day.

Our students competed in various Physics activities alongside girls from other local schools. Pupils also had an inspirational career talk about job opportunities after a degree in Physics/Engineering, encouraging girls to study A Level Physics. Overall, they had an exciting day filled with lots of Physics experiments.

Please read below some reviews from our students of the day:

 

"Thanks to Dr Marya for taking us to the St Helen’s Physics Tournament for International Women’s Day. It was a fun experience and we met lots of new friends. In the experiment challenge, all teams had to find out the spring constant of the given spring. We were given an equation for spring constant and had to figure out independent, dependent and control variables. We used the given equipment to take readings and wrote down the method. Then we plotted a graph to find out the gradient. It was an interesting and quite challenging experience, where we learned a lot. There was also a Physics calculations race, where we went head to head with other schools and an escape room which was really fun with four experiments on different parts of Physics. Finally, we had a career talk where we learned less than 20% of people doing Physics are women and learned what career paths you could take with Physics."

Tavasmi R (Year 10)

 

"It was really fun and there were four different activities that tested participants’ understanding of fundamental Physics principles in engaging ways. After all the challenges were completed, we had a Career talk, which was about how Physics can help us analyse different things and how studying Physics at A Level and at University can help us in future Career pathways. The Career talk was really interesting, inspirational and educational."

Kalgi B (Year 10)

 

"I went on a trip to St Helens for a Physics Tournament with three other girls in my year group. We took a bus and then a train to get there. Once we arrived, we went into a building where they were hosting the competition and we did an 'icebreaker' to make some friends - for example, find someone who has the same birth month as you, etc. Then we did a practical for oscillations. During the practical, we were taken into an escape room where we were timed and there were different activities in order to escape. After we finished the escape room we went back to the practical. We finally finished the practical when the timer finished. Then we did a Physics race where we had to get the questions and run to our group and bring the answer back. After we finished that, we went to an assembly where we were listening to a Mechanical Engineer's story. It was a really fun day."

Sahasra V (Year 10)

 

"Thank you for taking us to the St Helen's Physics Tournament this year. I made a lot of friends from the other schools that attended and I'm grateful for this unique opportunity. We did three main tasks there that we were assessed on: the practical experiment, the "escape room" and the race. The practical tested us, but I think it was fun and it got us to think out of the box! The "escape room" got us to think more creatively and we had to use teamwork in order to get out, which I found really interesting. However I think that the race was the most exciting and the most difficult part as it had really difficult questions that challenged our skills and knowledge. The last thing we did was sit in a Careers talk which was really inspirational and it showed us the journey of one of the former St Helen's students; we were also informed on women in STEM and what other Career paths Physics could lead us to, which was very useful. 

Kritika R (Year 10)