Congratulations to all First-Year students who took part in this year’s Cell Model Competition. The annual event challenges students to create a model of any cell type using materials they can find at home. The open criteria allows for lots of creativity, and the students enjoyed presenting their models to their classes this week, before they were judged by new Head of Junior Science, Mr Borley.
As always, there were many cell types created, with: plant cells made of sweets and jelly; animal cells made of clay and marbles; a root hair cell made of Lego; bacterial cells made of Styrofoam and beads; red blood cells made of cookies and strawberry laces; sperm cells made of plasticine; and neurons made of pipe cleaners and more.
The winning cells were:
1st place: Zarak for his impactful animal cell made from an egg chair. It had a football as the nucleus, various pipe cleaners and pompoms as other elements of the cell.
2nd place: Anish for his giant colourful nerve cell, which was beautifully modelled and labelled.
Joint 3rd place: Dhilan, who made a bacterial cell model with various parts made of coloured cords with an excellent key and Ibrahim, who made a ‘Vic-spore-ia Sponge Cake’, which was an effective model of a fungal cell.
Prizes included an at-home science kit, science book and a heat changing periodic table mug. And the glory of winning, of course.
Mr Borley said, “This was my first time judging the entries and I was really impressed by the quality of the work presented, it was genuinely hard to choose winners and honourable mentions in most of the classes. I was also really impressed by the use of different materials, particularly upcycling of items such as AstroTurf, coat hangers, uneaten sweets and many others to form intricate parts of cells!”
As well as the winners, there were honourable mentions for 20 students. Well done to all.
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