Abingdon News No.58

16 September 2021 Abingdon News The first years explored Abingdon learning more about the history of the School. They visited St Nicolas’ church where they hunted high and low for griffens, walked the outline of Abingdon Abbey laid out in the Abbey Gardens, found out more about the classroom that John Roysse created in 1563, and looked at Roysse’s tomb in St Helen’s church. The Cartwright Group of middle school pupils who want to explore mathematical patterns, have been delving into the undergraduate world of Group Theory, looking for abstract patterns in various contexts including modular arithmetic, transformations of shapes, complex numbers and ways to put on a T-Shirt in the dark. This culminated with constructing the Cayley Table for the group S4, which are all the possible symmetries of the tetrahedron, and how they combine together. The Group finished off the term investigating the different possible tessellations of the plane and Platonic and Archimedean solids - the truncated icosahedron was the most impressive build (more commonly known as the shape of a football!) This year’s online Summer Concert was shared with the Abingdon community worldwide. It was a tribute to the students and teachers who have sustained music making of all sorts – classical, jazz, singing and instrumental throughout the pandemic. The concert celebrated our senior students who move on to pastures new after making tremendous contributions to music at Abingdon. It was also reassuring to hear from our very talented younger musicians who are stepping into their shoes. Investigating mathematical patterns Summer concert The Dark Peak The Silver DofE practice expedition was to the Dark Peak District where teams completed the challenging climb up Kinder Scout at 636m and were rewarded with stunning views. Lower School Ceramics Club have been creating a parliament of owl thumb pots with air dry clay. Exploring Abingdon