You might recall that the RSC held a competition at the 2012 Cambridge Science Festival in late March: “What’s the most demanding Olympic sport?” ahead of the launch of the RSC's Chemistry in the Olympics website linking science and sport. Festival goers could enter by writing their answers on a giant fluorescent post-it note with a justification for that sport. We had over 200 entries and some fantastic answers.

We picked Toby Lock’s answer of the marathon as the winner, which had the justification of “because you have to be really fit and need to be able to know how fast to go and control your breathing. You need to be physically and mentally fit and you need to have good endurance too”.



Last Friday, Toby (who is 11, almost 12) came down to Thomas Graham House with his younger brother, Oscar (who is 7½), and parents to collect his prize of £100 worth of vouchers and a certificate from RSC president Professor David Phillips. 

“I’m really happy to win the competition because I put effort into my answer,” said Toby. “I got to meet the president of the Society, which was a really good experience because he’s such a prestigious member of society.”

It was a fantastic day, and really good to meet the family and find out more about them. The kids were so bright! Toby actually wants to be a baseball player when he’s older and is a massive Red Sox fan but if he can’t do that then he wants to be a RAF pilot, which brings us back to science.

During their visit, Toby and Oscar were looking at Learn Chemistry. Toby was very impressed with the Visual Elements Periodic Table temperature sliding bar and the amount of information that you can find on each element. He said that he would be telling his older brothers, who are revising for GCSEs and AS‑levels, about it. Oscar also liked the imagery for the different elements. The Global Experiment was also something the family on the whole were interested in taking part in and will be writing to their schools to ask them to take part.



From left to right: Jo Lock (mum), David Phillips, Toby Lock (winner), Oscar Lock (younger brother) and Andrew Lock (father)

Toby’s family is actually from Ashby-de-la-Zouch, Leicestershire, and both parents are non-scientists but they make the two-hour journey every year to attend the Cambridge Science Festival. Toby’s mum, Jo, told me that the reason they go is because they really see the value in it and how inspirational it is to youngsters. Toby added: “We like to come to the science festival every year because we like to learn new and exciting things in a fun and educational way.” This just goes to show how much people of all ages and backgrounds value science festivals, which we actually blogged about this earlier in the year: Why do we love science festivals? 
 
We also chatted to the Lock family about how important it is to have an inspirational teacher, especially during key stage 4. However, many science teachers at this level have only specialised in biology, physics, or chemistry. They are not confident teaching the other sciences, tending to stick very closely to the curriculum, and without enthusiasm - and the pupils can really see this. The RSC has developed a course called “Chemistry for non-specialists” exactly for this reason, to enhance the teaching experience for the teacher and the students. You can find all of the resources to support this course here, amongst the thousands of student and teacher resources that can be found on Learn Chemistry.