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V6T 1Z1
Gordon Bates
Celeste Leander
V6T 1Z4
http://www.physics.ubc.ca/outreach/web/smith/
Abstract
Canada’s National Grade 10 Science Contest, the Michael Smith Science Challenge, has
been run annually by the University of British Columbia (UBC) since 2003. It is
available in English and French and typically has 800 participants each year from all
areas of the country. The broad aims of the program are to stimulate interest in science in
students and teachers, and to provide valuable information for the university community
about the state of knowledge and ability among grade 10 students. The contest questions,
which aim to test very general ability and knowledge, have also proved to be revealing
when given to incoming and upper-level undergraduates, who on many occasions do not
Introduction
The Michael Smith Science Challenge[1] is a contest aimed at high school students who
are completing Science 10. We have modelled it on the highly successful mathematics
contests for various grade levels run by the University of Waterloo. The Challenge was
piloted in British Columbia in April 2002, and we have been running it across Canada
There were two main aims which prompted the Challenge’s initiation. Firstly, three of
the present authors (GB, AK, CW) have long experience with the Physics and Chemistry
Olympiads[2], the Chemical Institute of Canada National High School Examination[3], and
the Canadian Association of Physicists High School Examination[4], which are all aimed
at Grade 12 students. It was our feeling that students attempting these very rigorous
examinations would benefit greatly from experience gained at a lower level. We also
noticed that most students participating in these Grade 12 contests were already
committed to their chosen fields. In Canadian schools, grade 10 is the last level where
before it crystallizes into single-subject courses in grades 11 and 12. It is the last time
students get a chance to tackle the really big scientific issues of our time in a wholistic
manner[6]. A contest at the Grade 10 level therefore offered the advantage of raising the
Secondly, the information we gain from this enterprise is very useful to us as teachers of
interdisciplinary program at UBC called Science One[7], and we would like to see how
much of the foundation grade 10 material they have assimilated at the time. The type of
questions we ask in the contest are those we assume are part of a university student’s
background knowledge and skills. In addition, we frequently ask these same questions of
our undergraduates to test their retention of basic science. What we learn from the
Challenge allows us to modify how we teach and what we assume of our students.
(UBC’s Physics 420, run by AK) designed for graduating students who are thinking of
becoming teachers. These students could potentially be up in front of a high school class
We approached the initiation of this contest in the following way. In late 2001 we
chose a multiple-choice format, for ease and definiteness of grading. One examination
was posted on the web. Every high school in British Columbia was sent a letter, attention
the Grade 10 science teacher, informing them of the forthcoming examination, and
directing them to the website. Teachers and students were invited to try this preliminary
examination, and to request the solutions and send comments and suggestions by e-mail.
Many did so. In early April 2002, the other examination was mailed to each school, with
directions that the examination was to be proctored in the school on a certain morning for
any grade 10 student wishing to take it. Scripts were mailed back to the University of
During this process, seed funding was secured from the UBC Faculty of Science and each
of the participating departments. Crucially, we received the kind permission of the late
Michael Smith’s family to use the name of UBC’s 1993 Nobel Prizewinner for the
contest.
The contest was run nationally for the first time in April 2003. The biggest step in
The Michael Smith Challenge is a lean operation. In January we hire a coop student for
four months to run the office. A ideal student has good organizational skills (a details
science, and is fluent in French. This is a tall order! The first requirement is absolutely
crucial. We have least success with the last requirement, and often have to use outside
committee (the authors of this paper) has created the examination. A contest date is set,
usually a Friday in late March or early April, depending on where spring breaks fall in
school districts across the country. (It is impossible to choose a date which works for all
schools, and we do have to allow a small number of schools to write the contest on the
following Monday.) The website with information and online registration forms is
updated from the previous year. Letters of notification are prepared and translated, and
sent to all schools teaching grade 10 (niveau 4 in Quebec) by fax and email to principals
in late February. Teachers register themselves (email address and preferred password)
and their students’ names. This information goes into a database which can be
downloaded as a spreadsheet. They are sent an automatic confirmation and instructions
The examination is released on the web late on the night preceding the day of writing.
Counters are on key webpages allow us to monitor traffic and see that everything is
working. There are usually a few panic emails early in the morning from teachers who
have misplaced passwords etc. The examination lasts one hour and is written
timing allows teachers to download the text and make the necessary photocopies before
the start time. Afterwards, the teachers mail the scripts back to us by regular post.
The scripts are marked by a student who has worked with us for several years. In early
May, the results and analysis are translated and mailed back to teachers, including
certificates for students placed nationally and in each province, and any in the top 10%
and 25% of the marks distribution. Results are also posted on the web.
The budget for the operation is quite small. The coop student costs us around $8,000, and
we give out $2,000 in prizes. Communication, translation and marking costs are about
$1,000. We receive $3,000 in marking fees at $5 each. The $8,000 difference is made up
equally between grants from the Faculty of Science, and the Natural Sciences and
Style of questions
In the first three years of this contest, all questions were single-answer multiple choice.
However, the limitations of this style became apparent when analyses of mark
distributions showed very little deviation from random answering – except for marks
above 50%. As this examination is meant to be difficult and to find the brightest students
in the country, only a small fraction of the marks were above this level. We were
therefore concerned that some of the provincial prizes (provinces vary widely in
population and size) and “top-25%” certificates were awarded to students who had
requiring short written answers (Redish 2003). These do not place an intolerable load on
the marker, and we feel they are much more revealing of what students are thinking. In
multiple-choice one only discovers anticipated misconceptions, not the ones the students
really have!
We pay attention to Bloom’s Taxonomy (Bloom 1984), and try and mix general
knowledge questions with those requiring a more sophisticated analysis of situations and
synthesis of ideas. Our preferred subjects of questions are those which are not closely tied
to curricula, either because they are very general or related to a burning issue widely
covered in the media and thus generally known regardless of grade level.
Example Questions and Responses
About a third of our questions have some relevance to “physics”. Here we give examples
of questions of different types, and discuss the responses of the grade 10 students, and
also those of undergraduates in Science One or Physics 420 who have been given the
same questions. The numbers of students taking part in any one examination or quiz is
600-800 for the Michael Smith Challenge, 70 for Science One, and a dozen for Physics
420.
Full details of solutions, marking schemes and statistics are given on our webpage. Our
marking is generally very lenient; we are mostly interested in whether students have the
basic idea of what we are trying to get at; we do not split hairs.
A Scaling Question
(a) The area of the larger circular disc above is ___ times larger than that of the smaller
circular disc.
smaller sphere.
(c) The volume of the larger sphere above is ___ times larger than that of the smaller
sphere.
More than half the G10 students recognized that the area of a circle scales as the square
of the radius or diameter, which is not a trivial achievement. More that 1/3 also realized
that the area of a sphere scales the same way, which is more difficult. More than ¼ made
the last step of scaling the volume of the sphere with the cube of a linear dimension.
Of Science One students, 70% were correct in part (a), 40% in (b) – which is hardly any
dimension only. Sketch a graph of your best estimate of its velocity, as a function of time.
t (s) x (m)
3.0 1.0
4.0 2.0
5.0 4.0
6.0 7.0
7.0 11.0
More than half of all students simply plotted the position versus time and labelled the
graph “velocity”. It is hard to say whether this was just a rushed misreading of the
question and an assumption that it was a simple graphing question, or a genuine lack of
and called this velocity; we had anticipated this (it is the majority response – 80% – of
incoming Science One undergraduates to this same question!), which is why we did not
start with (x,t) = (0,0). Only a few percent of students divided the difference in position
by the difference in time, which is correct, as shown below: About a third of Physics 420
students got this substantially correct, although the mistakes of the rest tended to be those
3
v (m/s)
0
3 4 5 6 7
t (s)
translation question.
A Ranking Question
Four cubes of identical size and mass are made of the following:
(a) These blocks are left for several hours on a roof on a sunny summer day. Which
one(s) has(have) the highest temperature? Lowest temperature? Or are they all the
same?
(b) These blocks are left for several hours in boiling water. Which one(s) has(have) the
(c) These blocks are left for several hours in boiling water. Immediately after being
pulled out, which one(s) feel the hottest to your touch? Coolest? Or are they all the
same?
The physics behind this problem is that (a) colour determines the absorption of solar
radiation, (b) objects left in thermal conductive contact with surroundings of a given
temperature will attain that temperature, regardless of their various properties, and (c)
thermal conductivity determines how hot or cool objects of the same temperature feel to
the touch. Our original solution to part (a) caused us some embarrassment when it
because clear – too late - that the answer was by no means obvious even to professional
G10 students realized all the temperatures would be the same, only 50% of Science One
students thought the same. On making some enquiries we found that any discussion of
temperature has almost disappeared from the BC physics curriculum (about 85% of
A Fermi Question
Estimate, roughly, how many molecules of H2O fell on Canada last year in the form of
snow and rain. Show your work and what assumptions you make.
Less than 10% of students had enough of a shot at this question to be marked reasonably.
About half simply guessed an answer. A total of four students got within a factor of 100
of our estimate, and they were all ranked very highly on total marks.
Most Science One students guessed a volume or mass of annual precipitation (all wildly
wrong!) and proceeded from there; 4% of them started from a rainfall and land area
Sketch a graph on the axes below to show the angle of the Sun above and below the
horizon over the course of 24 hours at the time of the spring equinox. Imagine you are in
Winnipeg, Manitoba (latitude 50N, longitude 97W). Let positive values indicate angles
above the horizon, and negative values indicate angles below the horizon. The times are
local solar time (i.e. the Sun is highest in the sky at 12:00). Put numbers on the vertical
axis.
50
angle above/below horizon
40
30
20
10
(deg)
0
-100.00 6.00 12.00 18.00 24.00
-20
-30
-40
-50
time (hours)
For those who recognized the shape is roughly sinusoidal, most claimed the sun to be
90deg (or 180 or 360deg) above the horizon at noon in Winnipeg on March 21st. This is
also the majority response of first-year science undergraduates to this question (many of
whom are puzzled by the words “equinox” and “solstice”). Again, those G10 students
who got it right including the ± 40° range (10 out of 573), were ranked very highly on
total marks. Four out of 73 Science One students got the right shape and range.
Label the arrows (only) on this diagram explaining the Greenhouse Effect. Use no more
than three words per arrow. (The lengths of the arrows are not intended to have any
meaning).
[Words in parenthesis are for information only]
Sunlight
Atmosphere absorbs [far]
[visible and near-infrared]
infrared
Atmosphere
Earth’s surface
Full marks were awarded to any student who demonstrated a realization that the arrows
represented radiation (the undergraduates were told this) and that there are two parts to
the spectrum involved, and that the atmosphere transmits and absorbs them very
differently. Many students thought that the arrows indicated the migration of gases, (CO2,
ozone, CFCs, “pollution”) or the falling of acid rain etc. One fourth-year undergraduate
Here we found evidence that undergraduates do worse on this question than G10 students
(who were given a vaguer question). About 22% of grade 10 students got it substantially
right, compared to 4% of Science One students and 10% of Physics 420. Grade 10 is
probably the last time broad science issues like the Greenhouse Effect are discussed in
school, before the specialization of Physics 11 and 12 with its emphasis on formulae and
small well-defined systems that are amenable to simple analysis. Undergraduates will not
see the Greenhouse Effect again unless they take an Earth and Oceans elective or if it
The first thing we learnt is that it is very hard to set general, not-trivial questions when
we are completely divorced from the teaching of the participants. The second thing,
which became obvious after the first contests, is that the students find our questions very
hard. The questions the students find the easiest are those of simple recall (e.g. “What is a
gene?”) or looking for well-established patterns (e.g. in the Periodic Table, which is
given to them). Analysis and synthesis questions of the types given above are very
challenging, and remain so even as the students grow into undergraduates. Thirdly, many
of our graduating physics students, after at least 16 years of education, have not
As time progresses, we hope to make longitudinal studies to show how the students’
abilities change with time. As noted above, we have already studied how different
questions are answered by different levels of students, and will continue to do so. With
growing numbers, we would like to track how they perform at university. Already, UBC
The program is made possible by financial support from NSERC PromoScience and the
UBC Faculty of Science, and of course it could not exist without the enthusiasm of many
school teachers and students across Canada. The authors would also like to thank
individuals who were involved in the setting up and running of this program: Vancouver
secondary school teachers Brian Copeland and Jonathan Wilkie, UBC colleagues Tony
Griffiths and Stuart Sutherland, and UBC students David Brandman, Antony Chen, Peter
Friedel, Vincent Kwong, Tina Lee, Marie-Pierre Milette and Chelsea Taylor.
References
1. www.smithchallenge.ubc.ca
http://www.cheminst.ca/hsexam.html
http://www.physics.ubc.ca/~outreach/CAPexams/cap_home.htm
http://www.physics.ubc.ca/outreach/web/smith/en/curriculum_en.php
7. A. Hobson, Ozone and Interdisciplinary Science – Learning that Addresses the Things
9. http://www.physics.ubc.ca/outreach/web/phys420/index.php
10. C.E. Waltham et al., “The Michael Smith Grade 10 Science Challenge 2002”,
14. B.S. Bloom, Taxonomy of educational objectives. Allyn and Bacon, Boston, MA
(1984).