This year Kate Gardiner, Charlie Roberts, Zaimel Saaed, Lily Pilkington, Jazmin Garvey, Rebekah Gray and Winifred Davis, with chaperone Emma Garvey, represented Christchurch Girls’ High School / Te Kura o Hine Waiora at the BrainBee competition hosted by the University of Otago.

The drive to Dunedin was mostly uneventful, apart from a slight misjudgement of water depth around the Moeraki boulders which left one team member soaked from the waist down. This year the team stayed at the Otago Museum, and Monday evening consisted of a visit to the microscopy labs (electron microscope images of a head louse were a highlight) and a very interesting hour spent in the W.D. Trotter Anatomy Museum. The team then retired to the museum and enjoyed a pizza dinner followed by a visit to some of the amazing exhibitions at the museum as well as a night walk carried out in total darkness.

The competition began at 9am on Tuesday morning. The girls had to answer a series of questions on neuroscience across two rounds to see who would qualify for the individual semi-finals. Zaimel, Jazmin, Charlie, Kate and Winifred all qualified for the semi-finals.

There were also a series of teacher challenges during the day – Mr Aaron and Jazmin entered a challenge to build a neuron out of plasticine and were voted the best sculpture by the audience on the day.

After lunch all the students attended a lab-based session, using microscopes to observe a range of nerve tissue, and using electrodes to stimulate the ulnar nerve to cause involuntary twitching in the muscles of the arm and hand. The squeals of enjoyment and laughter across the lab proved that this was a very popular session. 

The competition concluded with the team challenge and the individual final. CGHS was represented by Jazmin, Winifred, Kate and Charlie in the team’s contest and Winifred and Kate won their way through to the grand final. In the final each contestant must read their answers out to the whole audience, which can be very nerve-wracking. When the results were read out it turned out that Kate Gardiner came third in the individual final and Winifred Davis finished overall runner up to a student from Nelson College for Girls. An outstanding achievement for our individual competitors for the second year running. Our teams both competed strongly, eventually finishing second in the competitive teams event (Jazmin, Winifred, Kate and Charlie) and our non-competitive team won their category (Rebekah, Zaimel and Lily).