Catalyst: Science & Society

Students have released the third edition of Sevenoaks School’s science magazine, Catalyst. This edition, entitled Science and Society, covers a variety of topics including meditation, life-saving venom, the teenage mind, the Human Genome Project and much more. Read here

All students study experimental sciences throughout the entirety of their education at Sevenoaks. The Creativity, Action and Service element of the IB Diploma programme encourages pupils to initiate projects and work collaboratively. Within this framework, a group of students now in the Upper Sixth restarted the last year and produced the first edition in a new format, with contributions from students across the Lower, Middle and Upper Schools. 

‘We started the third edition of Catalyst in Michaelmas term and, as Upper Sixth members, we were keen to ensure the endurance of Catalyst. We reached out to potential Lower Sixth members and were pleased to see so many passionate science students want to join. With Covid-19 social distancing regulations preventing the mixing of year groups, we had to conduct all of our meetings on Teams, which was challenging. We slowly managed to settle into new methods of communicating and organising, mostly using chains of emails between writer, editor, and designer. We were fortunate enough to get submissions from across the school, including a set of marine biology essays written for a competition. Overall, despite the long time it took to publish this edition, it is gratifying to see how this turned out to be the longest edition yet, with the most amount of people we have ever had involved. Currently, we are already planning for the next one, and I am very excited to see the trajectory this magazine takes, in the hands of the more than capable new members!’

Sian McAllister, Upper Sixth