INDEPENDENT RESEARCH PROJECT

INDEPENDENT RESEARCH PROJECT PRESENTATION EVENING

Many congratulations to our six Upper Sixth Formers whose IRP projects were selected to go through to the final. This is a tremendous achievement, not least because there were 75 entries this year.

The finalists and the title of their projects were:

Ben: Investigating the lift to drag ratio of an airfoil

Maddie: Cashless Society Rhianna: Imperial Women Leah: Oxytocin Mulang: How Should Programmers Beat the Time and Seize the Day (electronic version) Leo: The Quantum Hall of Fame

Our panel of three external judges had difficulty deciding on a winner but eventually singled out Ben as the winner; Ben receives the Young Prize, worth £300 towards the cost of university books and resources. The runners-up, who also received prizes, were Mulang and Rhianna.

Many congratulations, too to the three finalists of the Intermediate IRP. These three pupils presented their projects as part of the evening:

Ananya (Fifth Year): Explore the importance of a sense of ‘home’ in refugee literature

Michelle (Fifth Year): Is xenotransplantation a solution to organ failure? Alex (Fourth Year): How is game theory used in the Prisoner’s Dilemma and the Game of Chicken?

The standard of these presentations was excellent and the overall winner was Ananya.

IRP

INTERMEDIATE RESULTS 2019

The second annual Intermediate Independent Research took place at the end of November. This competition seeks to open up the Sixth Form IRP opportunities for intellectual exploration to pupils in the Fourth and Fifth Years.

Entrants choose their own research title from any area of academia, prepare and compile an essay or project over the summer holidays and submit the fruits of their labour for assessment by Caterham staff.

A very encouraging 28 pupils (twice as many as last year) entered the competition with projects ranging from North Korea to Aristotle’s Poetics, from veganism to impressionism. It is no platitude to say that the standard was remarkably high and the task of choosing a small group of finalists from so strong a field was an unenviable task for the team of staff corralled into sharing the responsibility. Several very fine projects were “Commended” or “Highly Commended”, but only those adjudged the best three were invited to present their work at the Senior IRP evening last week. Seemingly undaunted by the occasion, Michelle (Fifth Year) gave an extraordinarily lucid and detailed account of xenotransplantation, while Alex (Fourth Year) made some seriously high-level mathematics comprehensible to all as he discussed Game Theory.

The winner of the Intermediate IRP 2019, however, was Ananya (Fifth Year), whose essay and presentation on the theme of “home” in refugee literature showed scholarly endeavour and analytical dexterity well beyond her years. Well done to Ananya, and to all her peers who volunteered to spend their summer holidays on their own independent intellectual journeys.