Head's Newsletter 17 June 2022

CHEMISTRY CHALLENGE

SUPERBLOOOMS FOR THE JUBILEE

On May 25th, the four members of ‘ Friends of Tiffin Chemistry ’, our qualifying team of Year 10s in the Royal Society of Chemistry ’ s Chemistry Challenge, made their way to Kingston University to compete in the Downlands Local Section final of the competition. They competed against five other schools, taking part in four separate challenges that included a multiple choice round testing their general chemistry knowledge, a practical round that involved a titration, a round that tested their memorisation skills, and a materials round. The group demonstrated their excellent teamwork skills over the course of the afternoon, and they were a credit to Tiffin School. While waiting for the results to come in, we were given a tour of Kingston University ’ s chemistry department, which housed a plethora of interesting equipment from state of the art NMR spectrometers to electron microscopes. In the end, the team placed fourth, winning themselves each a £10 Amazon gift voucher and the chemistry department £40! Well done to Eric Meng (unanimously voted team captain), Kaizad Kapadia, Arnav Vacher and Vincent Xue .

Earlier this year Tiffin School joined the Superbloom project with the Tower of London receiving seeds to create a flower garden for Her Majesty The Queen's Platinum Jubilee. The Superblooms Project has transformed the Tower of London's iconic moat into a spectacular, flower - filled garden. Our seeds for this were planted by Tiffin ’ s Horticulture and Dendrological Society (THADS) in March to form our own small Jubilee flower garden in the Head ’ s Garden near the Chester Centre which is now blossoming. The seeds include Anethum graveolens / Dill; Calendula officinalis 'Indian Prince' / Pot Marigold; Centaurea cyanus 'Blue' / Cornflower Blue; Echium vulgare 'Blue Bedder' / Viper's Bugloss; Eschscholtzia californica 'Single Mixed' / Californian Poppy; Helipterum roseum, 'Pierrot' / Paper Daisy and Linaria maroccana 'Fairy Lights' / Fairy ToadFlax.