This year our senior chemistry students have excelled in both local and international chemistry competitions.

During Term 1, two Year 13 students (Alexander Mayo and Alex Liu) were invited to the Chemistry Olympiad camp, after completing two rounds of testing and assignments during the summer break. They attended the week long camp (of chemistry practicals and more testing) held at Auckland University during the Term 1 holidays but were unable to make the New Zealand representative team (of four students).

In September Joseph Guo (Year 10) achieved a Bronze award and qualified into the next round of the 2024 Chemistry Olympiad competition (he will be competing with Year 12 students). This is a tough competition and great to see our students competing at the top level.

On Tuesday June 13 we were pleased to welcome back the NZIC Analytical Chemistry Trophy, which HBHS has not won since 2016. The NZIC Analytical competition involves Year 13 Chemistry students from schools around the Waikato and Bay of Plenty region, who get the opportunity to experience chemistry at university level using equipment far beyond what we can offer in our school labs.

Our participating students were Samuel Priest, Alexander Mayo, Alex Liu, Thomas ter Beek, Luca Sweetman, Fraser Liao, Hithen Raaj and Raihan Aizam. Well done to the winning team of Samuel, Alexander, Alex, and Thomas who obtained a winning result within 0.001 of the correct answer.

We had five Year 13 students participate in the International Chemistry Quiz. This year over 100,000 chemistry students participated from over 20 countries. Impressive results from our students (Ziyad Arif, Eddie Bi, Alex Liu, Alexander Mayo, and Samuel Priest) who all got High Distinction certificates (in the top 10% of their year). Alex Liu and Samuel Priest finished first and second in New Zealand, respectively. Four Year 12 students participated in the University of Otago Science Quiz. Congratulations to Janadhee Balasooriya for his Distinction award.

On 18 October ChemQuest (Year 12 competition) was again held at the University of Waikato. We had four teams of students participating (Rupert Leary, Theo Bankers, Justin Yang, Hassan Naveed, Ryan McCracken, Dylan Chang, TJ Lee, Mekaal Mehdi, Joe Jiang, Janadhee Balasooriya, Liam Woollaston and Bede Hayes) who enjoyed the night of chemistry trivia, explosions, the odd spot prize and pizza. We thank the Chemistry Department at Waikato University for organising these competitions for our students.