Canada’s National Grade 10 Science Contest: The Michael Smith Science Challenge

Chris Waltham and Andrzej Kotlicki

Department of Physics & Astronomy, University of British Columbia, Vancouver BC,

V6T 1Z1

Gordon Bates

Department of Chemistry, University of British Columbia, Vancouver BC, V6T 1Z3

Celeste Leander

Departments of Botany and Zoology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver BC,

V6T 1Z4

Contact email: cew@phas.ubc.ca

Phone: 604-822-5712; Fax 604-822-5324

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

perform much better than the grade 10 high school students.

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

since then. Typically 800 students participate from all provinces.

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

science is taught broadly[5] (astronomy, biology, chemistry, earth science, physics),

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

level of interest in, and awareness of, all branches of science.

Secondly, the information we gain from this enterprise is very useful to us as teachers of

first-year university science. In particular, three of us (CL, GB, CW) teach in an

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.

Additionally we have given these questions to 4th-year majors students in a course

(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

in 1-2 years, and it is important to know what they know.

Setting up the program

We approached the initiation of this contest in the following way. In late 2001 we

prepared two examinations based on the British Columbia Science 10 curriculum. 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

British Columbia (Waltham 2002).

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

moving from a purely provincial examination was to create a database of provincial

science curricula in order to ensure fairness across the country.

The mature program: a calendar of operations

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

person), experience in creating webpages (php and html), is broadly competent in

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

translators, which is cumbersome and expensive. By late January, the faculty-wide

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

on how to download the examination by email.

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

simultaneously across the country (9am pacific to 1:30 pm in Newfoundland). This

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

Engineering Research Council’s “PromoScience” program.

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

simply gotten lucky.

In 2005 we moved to a broad spectrum of non-multiple-choice questions, particularly

representation-translation types (e.g. drawing a graph, analyzing a diagram) and those

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.

Let the circles above represent spheres rather than discs:

(b) The surface area of the larger sphere above is ___ times larger than that of the

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

better than the G10 students – and 60% in part (c).

An Analytical Representation-Translation Question

Here is a table of an object’s position x as a function of time t. It is moving in one

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

understanding of the word “velocity”. A much smaller number of students divided x by t

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

of excessive sophistication: trying to find a mathematical form to differentiate. This

yields the same answer but is more error-prone.

3
v (m/s)

0
3 4 5 6 7
t (s)

Figure 1. The straightforward but illusive solution to the analytical representation-

translation question.
A Ranking Question

Four cubes of identical size and mass are made of the following:

- Aluminum painted white

- Aluminum painted black

- Concrete painted white

- Concrete painted black

(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

highest temperature? Lowest temperature? Or are they all the same?

(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

physicists. Writing non-trivial unambiguous questions without a paragraph of caveats and

special conditions is not easy!

Part (b) would seem to be the most obvious and easy of the three. However, while 40% of

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

Science One students are from BC).

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

estimate, which is what we had hoped for.

Graphical Representation of Everyday Experience.

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 50N, longitude 97W). 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.

Physics in the News.

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]

Atmosphere radiates [far]

Sun Reflected
infrared
Sunlight

Sunlight
Atmosphere absorbs [far]
[visible and near-infrared]
infrared

Atmosphere

Atmosphere radiates [far]

infrared

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

labelled the arrows , , and .

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

happens to be mentioned in an upper-level modern physics class.

What we have learnt, and hope to learn in the future

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

assimilated very much.

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

Student Recruitment consults us for our lists of winners.

Acknowledgements

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

2. Gauss Mathematics Contest, http://cemc.uwaterloo.ca/CMCEnglish.cfm

3. Canadian Physics and Chemistry and Physics Olympiads, http://www.ccpo-occp.ca/

4. Chemical Institute of Canada National High School Examination,

http://www.cheminst.ca/hsexam.html

5. Canadian Association of Physicists High School Prize Exam,

http://www.physics.ubc.ca/~outreach/CAPexams/cap_home.htm

6. Canadian Grade 10/Niveau 4 Science Curriculum Summary,

http://www.physics.ubc.ca/outreach/web/smith/en/curriculum_en.php

7. A. Hobson, Ozone and Interdisciplinary Science – Learning that Addresses the Things

that Count Most, Journal of College Science Teaching, 33-37 (1993).

8. N. Dryden and M. MacLean, “Academic Performance of Former Science One
Students”, http://www.scienceone.ubc.ca/grad_performance.pdf

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”,

Canadian Journal of High School Science, 2, 47-59 (2002).

11. Michael Smith biography, http://www.michaelsmith.ubc.ca/faculty/smith/

12. NSERC PromoScience, http://www.nserc.ca/promoscience/

13. E..F. Redish, Teaching Physics Wiley, New York (2003).

14. B.S. Bloom, Taxonomy of educational objectives. Allyn and Bacon, Boston, MA

(1984).