Year 13 Merlyn Barrer was selected as one of 32 students nationally to attend the New Zealand Chemistry Olympiad training camp, held in Auckland from the 13th -18th of April. He shares his experiences below.

The basic purpose of the camp is to pick a team of four to go to the International Chemistry Olympiad . However, it also let us meet like-minded people and learn a bunch of interesting chemistry stuff.

First, there was an entry test last year which any year 12 taking chemistry was allowed to take. Then from that test they selected about 200 people throughout NZ to go to the next section. These people got given material to study over the summer and term 1, and then near the end of term 1 there was a second, harder test. From this they selected the top 32 people, and these people got to come on the training camp.

At the end of the training camp there were two exams, a practical one and a theory one. These determined the team that got to represent NZ - I did not get selected for this team.

I found the camp to be very interesting. It deepened my understanding of chemistry quite a lot and showed me areas of it I hadn't really done before. A highlight was getting to do physical experiments with proper university lab equipment. It definitely helped to make me more interested in chemistry.