Ulog No. 15: "Marie and Pierre Curie"

Image by @evlachsblog

Do you know this symbol on the left? If your answer is the chemical symbol for radium from the Periodic Table of Elements, then you're correct. But it's rather obvious, don't you think? I should not have asked, should I? Silly me!

There's a reason for the introductory paragraph because I want to write about why this symbol means so much to me and also to write the succeeding paragraphs, hence the whole post, as a precursor to my next #ulog post.

When I was in second-year high school...

... I participated in a Science Quiz Bee held at my school. The quiz bee comprised of 16 contestants; 4 from each class from the first year to the fourth year level. It had three rounds: preliminary, intermediate and final. I was one of the 4 students chosen for my class, and I had to compete against my three classmates. It was a friendly competition, anyway. As with every contest, the goal was to be "the last man standing", but to be chosen to participate still gave our whole class an honour and pride.

Even though the quiz bee was a competition within the school, this required me to study, memorise and review different subject matters in Science.

Everyone was very eager to qualify for the finals. Unfortunately, my three classmates got eliminated in the preliminary round. I was the only one trying to survive the battle. The whole second-year class was cheering for me. All the top students of the fourth year class were consistently scoring points, but so was I.

I reached the final round. There were 10 questions to be answered. The last question, and this I still vividly remember, because my science teacher back when I was first-year high school was quite impressed because in the last 10 seconds I remembered the answer to the question:

Who are the two physicists that discovered radium?

The other contestants answered Marie Curie, and either they didn't know Pierre or they must have forgotten. Sometimes, the nerves can cause someone to make mistakes or forget something. This was probably the case for all the participants. Some questions I had answered incorrectly, too, or I didn't know the answer at all. Luckily for me, I got the most points, and so I won the Science Quiz Bee School Year 1995-1996.

Indeed, all the hard work and late nights for studying and memorising information paid off. It did give the second-year class and our adviser such honour and pride because a 12-year-old child competed against the best students of the school and won!