On 29^th February 2012, the Natural science contest at Hanoi – Amsterdam took place at the 700-seat hall. Secondary Amsers had an attractively exciting competition, showing no less talents than high school Amsers.

Alpha team

Enigma team

Board of Judges

Alpha and Enigma, 2 rival teams, had passed the qualifiying rounds to go through to the final. 2 teams had 2 absolutely unique names: While Alpha in Greek’s numeric system means “number 1”, Enigma means “riddle”. Both teams tried to find the competition “riddle number 1” – the champion place. Thanks to the advice from the Math teacher, Mr.Trinh Hoai Duong and the Physics teacher, Ms.Pham Bich Hang, the 2 teams excellently finished the competition with really close ratios and many surprisingly amazing overtakes.

Round 1: The thrilling start took place. Each team had to answer 10 questions in 1 minute; of which each team got 10 points for each right and got none for wrong one. Alpha started firstly, answering 7 questions with only 2 right and got 20 points. Enigma had the second start, dealing with 10 questions and getting 50 points owing to longer time of preparation. However, by no means did Alpha lose their spirit! They did try their best to come back in round 2 of the competition.

Round 2: “Chase images, catch letters” took place really interestingly with the running and chasing of the 2 teams, as well as loud applause from the audience and in time advice from the counselors. Let’s see how they completed this round!

Audience

Round 2 began with the team having the lower score – Alpha. In this round, each team with the wrong answer must give their chance to the other. If both teams could give no correct answer, the chance went to the audience. And when the MC of the show asked our little audience if they wanted to answer any questions, a big “yes” was the reply: somehow they didn’t wish the two teams to get any right answers? Of course not! The audience was there to support and hope the two teams to be able to show everything in their ability; it was just part of their spontaneity with “Amsers’” style ^^.

However, the joke almost came true when 5 out of ten questions fell into the hands of the humorous and smart audiences. Both teams had hardly any answers for given questions or had answers which turned out wrong after the counselors’ advice.

MC discussed with a judge

Nevertheless, in round 3 – “Versus”, both teams were grimly determined to raise their scores. And this time, the members in both teams competed “face to face” with one another in turns, which made the competition extremely dramatic. Besides, the whole hall was really heated up with the applause and support from the audience to both teams. In round 3, the two teams selected two members of grade 6, 7, 8 and 9 in a respective order to answer questions about Maths, Biology, Physics and Chemistry. Grade 6 started first with 2 Maths and Biology parts; then it came to grade 7 with Physics and Biology components, grade 8 with Chemistry and Biology fields and grade 9 with Physics and Maths aspects. Each right answer earned 20 points and the members must quickly get the right to answer when having the right ones.

And surprisingly, in this round, Alpha had an amazing overtake when cotinually getting 20 points for each question and their total score in this round amounted to 80 points, while Enigma reached 20 points only.

But round 4 – the final round of the competition was crucial. Round 4 named “Find the riddle” had 5 questions, for every right one each team got a code. And after getting enough 5 codes, the two teams had to connect them to give the final answer. At the first question, Alpha quickly got the first code but then, the both teams had no right answers for the second question. When it came to the third question, both teams got the right answer and the third code of the competition; Alpha continued to get the fourth question and the fourth code. And especially, at the last question, when Alpha are entitled to answer, Enigma had only one code (birthday and deathday of the “riddle”) and quickly found the riddle with the right answer – Alfred Nobel and got the last 50 points. (Alfred Bernhard Nobel (21 October 1833 – 10 December 1896) was a Swedish chemist, engineer, innovator, and armaments manufacturer. He was the inventor of dynamite. Nobel also owned Bofors, which he had redirected from its previous role as primarily an iron and steel producer to a major manufacturer of cannon and other armaments. Nobel held 350 different patents, dynamite considered the most famous. He used his fortune to posthumously institute the Nobel Prizes. Seemingly, with this riddle, the organizers of the competition did hope that our Amsers would become great scientists, bringing glory back to Hanoi – Amsterdam and Vietnam, equalizing with other continents and countries in the field of science and intelligence in the future.

Final triumph earned by Enigma

In the end, the final result was Alpha with 150 points and Enigma with 160 points. The scores were very close, and still, the winner was Enigma. They had proven their ability to rise, to overtake and to turn over the result with their intelligence and logical ability. However, Alpha had also proved themselves talented and smart. Both teams had brought the audience a lot of surprises with their abilities. Proud to be “the next Amsers”, they are certainly not inferior to the elders.

Journalist: Khanh Linh (S 11-14)

Translator: Hai Anh (A2 11-14)