Praedinius Gymnasium wins Science battle

Three provinces, ten schools, four preliminary rounds with 450 entrants, 120 of whom made it to the final of Science battle in Bernoulliborg at the University of Groningen’s Faculty of Science and Engineering.

Science battle , a science contest for second-year secondary-school pupils that was formerly known as Jet-Net, is the initiative of business, schools and the local authorities in the northern Netherlands. The pupils followed an individual programme of four workshops followed by a superquiz. They ended the day by launching water rockets.

In its workshop, NAM took the pupils on a journey through the soil layers of the earth. At the end the pupils were expected to be able to recognize geological structures. The NAM workshop segued smoothly into the AkzoNobel one on salt, the white gold of the chemistry park in Delfzijl.

Creativity

Alongside tricky questions on salt, there was also call for creativity, with the pupils getting to make their own lava lamps. The unfamiliar mathematics in the workshop given by mathematics students Harmke and Stefan caused the most furrowed brows. Then there was another chance to be creative as the pupils built stunning rockets, which, thanks to the strong winds, reached record heights at the later launch.

Podium

Topics such as light, space travel and soil were the focus of the superquiz, which tested the pupils’ general science knowledge in 30 multiple-choice questions. Yury Kucherenko from Aletta Jacobs School deserves a special mention. He was the only entrant to have 25 questions right!

A competition isn’t a competition without a podium and a winner. The entrants fought it out for the following accolades: Individual Winner 2017 and Winning School . Emma de Rooij from Praedinius in Groningen was crowned best pupil, followed closely by Anna Gesink, also from Praedinius, and Femke Vonck from RSG de Borgen from Leek. The winning school was Praedinius followed by RSG de Borgen and CSG Dingstede from Meppel. Nassau put in a stunning performance coming fifth with only eight pupils.

Source: jet-net