Science

This year the Biology team welcomed Miss Chong and Mr Graham. It has been fabulous to have a fresh injection of new ideas and enthusiasm in the Biology department.

The Biology team had another very successful year in the NZQA scholarship exams. In February, we received notification that 26 of our students had gained a Biology scholarship, placing them in the top three percent of New Zealand. Six of these students also gained their scholarship at outstanding level.

We would like to congratulate the following students: Kyongeun Cha, Jamie Lee, Sua Cho, Max Ji, Jasmine Zhang, Ashley Huddart, Julia Ortanez, and Cameron Senior who gained scholarship as a Year 11 or 12 student—a brilliant feat.

The Biology Olympiad is an international competition in which Year 13 Biology students from around the world compete against each other.

The qualifying process involves thousands of students from around New Zealand being whittled down into a national team of five. This year, Cameron Senior made it through the qualifying rounds to be selected to the national team.

He was then awarded a Bronze medal at the International Biology Olympiad.

Cameron did exceptionally well, and we are very proud of him.

The Biology Olympiad was an incredibly valuable experience where I not only deepened my knowledge of biology, but also met several likeminded people. My experience began with a training camp where I learnt practical skills: dissections, running PCR tests, analysing species diversity, etc. From the camp, I was selected alongside three others to compete at the international competition, representing New Zealand, in two exams on a wide range of practical and theoretical knowledge. I was pleased to win a bronze medal, placing somewhere between 60th and 160th in the world. I encourage anybody with a passion for biology who wants to go beyond what’s taught in the classroom to take part—it’s fun, challenging, and you’ll learn lots along the way! - Cameron Senior

Students enrolled in this course have enjoyed a plethora of new content from cellular processes to mammals and flowering plants. The highlight of the year was a trip to Auckland Zoo where students received an excellent presentation from the zookeepers and got to experience first-hand the amazing efforts Auckland Zoo puts into conservation around New Zealand.

The 12 Biology students have enjoyed a jam-packed course, with the highlight being the rocky shore trip to Wenderholm. Students enjoyed getting out of the classroom the having the opportunity to practise their skills in the outdoors.

Year 13 Biology students welcomed the experience of going to Auckland Zoo and our scholarship students also got the unique opportunity to visit Tiritiri Matangi Island. The trip to the island was a great occasion to witness New Zealand’s biodiversity and the Department of Conservation efforts to protect several of our most endangered species.

2021 has been another positive year in chemistry. In April Minghan (Mason) Liu was chosen as a member of the New Zealand team to compete in the annual International Chemistry Olympiad competition. This was to take place in Japan in July. Unfortunately, due to Covid-19, the competition had to be held virtually rather than in person. Minghan had great success in this competition receiving a bronze award, placing him in the top 150 students in the world for his age group and was also the highest placed member of the New Zealand team. A massive congratulations to Minghan, you have done us all proud.

In other news, for the first time, our Year 11 extension students completed the Level 2 titrations internal, achieving exceptional results, continuing to refine our extension program. Despite all the lockdowns and disruptions 2021 has brought us, our students have risen to all the challenges, completing all the practical requirements of the different chemistry course and continue to display exceptional resilience.

Rangitoto College Physics students have had a productive year in 2021, with some outstanding academic results coming through, a wide range of extracurricular competitions and activities taking place, and a busy schedule of learning. Student achievement in internal assessments to date looks promising, and while our revision programme is being disrupted by the current Covid-19 lockdowns, students have completed most of their classroom learning.

In February, we received the news that sixteen of our students achieved the prestigeous Physics Scholarship in 2020. This included one Outstanding Scholarship, a Rangitoto College first, achieved by Year 12 International Baccalaureate student, Ethan Lu. The scholarship results achieved by the 2020 cohort were the best ever by any cohort at Rangitoto College.

Sorato Tokuo, Lucas Hebberd, and Matthew Prance made up the Rangitoto College 2021 Young Physicists’ Tournament (NZYPT) team. Having spent six months researching and experimenting, they presented their solutions to the problems at the NZYPT regional competition at Ormiston College in March this year. While they did not place in the tournament this year, it was a great learning experience and they resolved to return stronger in 2022.

In May, University of Auckland outreach group, Women in Engineering, came to the college to share their enthusiasm for engineering with our female physics and mathematics students. In addition to advice on what to expect and how best to prepare for a degree in engineering, they provided some challenging practical problems for our students to solve. Our students came out inspired and excited by the prospect of a degree in engineering.

Toward the end of Term 2, close to 250 Rangitoto College Physics and Calculus students participated in the annual Rainbow’s End Physics trip. Students experienced rotational dynamics on the Invader, vertical circular motion on the rollercoaster loop, simple harmonic motion on the Stratosfear and much more. The work completed during the trip reinforced students understanding of key concepts in the Level 3 Mechanical Systems achievement standard. It was a great day out! In July, 35 Rangitoto College students participated in the New Zealand Physics and Maths competition. Several students achieved outstanding results in this test-based competition: Jonathan Siah achieved an impressive 3rd place in Year 11, Raymond Huang received distinction in Year 11, and Tina Niu and Franck Chen achieved top 10 results in Year 10 and Year 12 respectively. It is great to see students embracing opportunities to challenge themselves in physics.

The annual New Zealand Engineering Science Competition, run by the University of Auckland’s Faculty of Engineering, took place in August. Ten teams of Rangitoto College students gathered on a Saturday morning and were issued the question, “How many 1 in 100 year extreme weather events can New Zealand expect to experience over the course of the next decade?” They spent the following eight hours researching, discussing, and developing a solution to the question, with all teams submitting their papers before the deadline. Results will be published later this year.

A group of about 40 students have been training regularly to compete against other schools in the Epro8 science and engineering competition. Unfortunately, the competition was scheduled to take place in August and was disrupted by the Covid-19 lockdown. Hopefully, they will have a chance to compete against other schools later this year!

The Physics teachers have been impressed by the engagement and enthusiasm of the Rangitoto College Physics students. We look forward to hearing of their continued success in their exams and in the coming years.

Despite the early challenges of some online learning in 2021, the Junior Science Curriculum has been well received by our students. Highlights include the ever popular eye dissection in Year 9, the heart dissection in Year 10, along with any practical involving Bunsen burners!

Junior Science has a clear focus on investigative skills through the year, in addition to students developing their knowledge of biology, chemistry, and physics. We explore the microscopic world, chemical reactions, energy, and how they all come together to build the world around us.

“Science is very interesting and fascinating, the fact that all these things exist and make up reality. It’s just a pleasure to learn about all of this as we humans have come so far to understand the universe to this point.” Eugene Kang, Year 9

“I enjoy doing fun practicals in Year 9 Science, even though I missed out dissecting the cow’s eye. Science from Year 8 to Year 9 is a huge jump— most of the words you might never even heard of them before. Science in Year 9 is fun and you also learn a lot of new things.” Catherine Liu, Year 9

“I particularly enjoyed learning about the human body topic this year—it was quite interesting exploring the different systems of our body (such as the skeletal/nervous/etc.) and how they work together to keep us alive. Me and my group even dissected a heart (a pig’s one!) Science has become one of my favourite subjects now, partly because of the content that we learn, but I think it is mainly because my teachers have taught me and guided me through the Junior Science course wonderfully. I really appreciate that, thank you!” Yule Chon, Year 10 “I’ve enjoyed the mixing topic for Science and also when we dissected a cow’s eye. You learn lots of new stuff in Science and it’s really fun and enjoyable.” Min-Jun Choi, Year 9

“Science at Rangitoto College is very fun and very interesting. We do different subjects every term and we do fun experiments about the topics mostly every lesson.” Olivia Xie, Year 9

“During this year’s Junior Science course, I have really enjoyed the practical experiments. During the electricity unit, we were able to play around with circuits and for our investigation, we got to conduct our own experiment. In the atomic structures unit, we were able to conduct experiments to learn the difference between chemical and physical changes. For the human body unit, we had the chance to dissect a sheep or a pig heart to allow us to fully understand the chambers of the heart and how it works. In the next unit, which was acids and bases, practical lessons happened at least once a week. We got to use different types of pH indicators and use different concentrations of acid to see how fast they dissolved different metals. The large number of practical lessons in the Junior Science course has made this year in science enjoyable.” Nic Dean, Year 10