THESE four teenagers are some of the UK’s brightest mathematicians.

Headington School pupils Rachel Wu, 17, and Michelle Kwok, Stephanie Hua and Nancy Zou, all 18, came third in a national contest aimed at giving bright young mathematicians a chance to shine.

After coming second in the regional finals of the UK Senior Team Mathematical Challenge at Wheatley Park School, Holton, the team went on to compete against 62 teams from around the country at the final in London.

All four pupils are boarders at the independent school.

Michelle, whose family is from Hong Kong, said: “It was really exciting. I was nervous because we were competing with so many other schools.”

Stephanie, who is from Shanghai, said: “Some of the questions were quite challenging but generally it was fun. I didn’t expect us to come third and when they announced it I was surprised.

“It was quite tense because not only did we have to do well but we had to think whether the others were doing well because we didn’t do perfectly in the first round.”

Head of maths Rachel Bowen said: “We are delighted with the result. The girls have all achieved success in the individual competitions, but they clearly also worked very effectively as a team.”

In the finals, the girls had to complete three rounds.

In the first round, they had to answer ten questions, and only made one small error.

The second round saw the team split into two pairs to complete a maths problem, and the third round was a mini relay where they had to answer six questions in the fastest possible time.

Maths teacher Helen Foot said: “I don’t think they did a huge amount of extra preparation, they were just very good.

“I was really impressed with them, they did really brilliantly. It’s inspired them and we hope some of them will take maths further.”

Test yourself THE cuboid has the property that when it is cut in half along the plane of symmetry that bisects its longest edges, the resulting halves have edges in the same proportion as the original cuboid. In what ratio are the sides of the cuboid? Give your answer in the form a : b : c, where a < b < c.

Answers: Answer: 1: 2 1/3: 2 2/3