Congratulations to our year 8 team of chemists who came third in the Annual Salters’ Festival of Chemistry last week.

The Festival was held on 11 June at the University of East London and involved a strong field of 11 school teams from around London, Essex and the South East.

The teams were challenged to become crime scene investigators for a day. Each team had to undertake chemical testing and chromatography of unknown substances to find the perpetrator of a crime and were marked not only on making a correct identification but on how methodically they worked and co-operated as a team.

The Sydenham High team’s success won them a prize for the school’s chemistry department – a molecule modeling kit – as well as individual prizes and certificates.