Road To Victory: Young Chemists Square Off at 34th Annual New Jersey Chemistry Olympics
Engineering $200 fuel cells capable of powering windmills, designing high-performance sunblock from scratch, quantifying how much copper is used to coat a modern penny — these were among the many unusual, pressure-packed challenges that stood before 250 of New Jersey’s top high school chemists, all arriving at NJIT last week with a goal that they’d been training towards for months.
Victory, at the 34th Annual New Jersey Chemistry Olympics.
On May 17, Bunsen burner flames were lit and the 34th Annual New Jersey Chemistry Olympics (NJCO) officially began, attracting student-teams from 16 New Jersey high schools to NJIT’s Wellness and Events Center (WEC) and Tiernan Hall. Students squared off and were judged on their abilities in all-things chemistry through a daylong marathon of time-based lab events and research presentation challenges.
This year’s competition — organized by NJIT and the North Jersey Section - American Chemical Society, with support from Merck, Exemplify, and Ashland LLC — saw a total of 33 bronze, silver and gold medal honors presented to the most successful teams from across the state.
However, by day’s end, only one team would achieve the competition’s ultimate prize — the Platinum Crucible.
“Now we come to the point of the show that everyone looks forward to,” said Dean Kevin Belfield of NJIT’s College of Science and Liberal Arts during the competition’s award ceremony, held at the WEC. “We’re all are excited to recognize the excellence displayed throughout today’s Olympics.”
After all was said and done, it was revealed that eight students comprising Westwood, NJ’s Primoris Academy Team A amassed the competition’s highest points tally, earning them the coveted status of 2019 Platinum Crucible winners.
“I think it’s safe to say we are all pretty excited right now,” said Andrew Markov, a high school junior who helped his team take gold in the competition’s “Chemical Nomenclature” event. “As cliché as it sounds, all our hard work, determination and comradeship was really important today, and I think that is why we ended up with the Crucible.”
“We started meeting in January a few times a week after school to prepare because a lot of us were going to be participating in multiple events here,” added Clara Kim, a junior who earned a bronze medal in the "Instrumental Lab" event at the ceremony. “Still, we are really surprised.”
For the Primoris Academy team, the road to Olympic victory wasn’t easy.
During the six-hour contest, teams aimed to best each other throughout a total of 10 events revolving around this year’s competition theme, “Energy.” Teams selected six of the ten events to participate in and show their skills to their best advantage.
The Olympic events were split into three core categories. The day’s “General Events” tested competitors’ ability to use digital, written and live presentation skills to engage audiences and convey technical concepts of chemistry — from website designs dedicated to informing the public about bioplastics, to demonstrations on the processes involved in a combustion reaction.
The Olympics’ “Research events” category gave students the stage to present research findings and product designs across a variety of preset topics — spanning designs for commercially viable sunblock based on research of ingredients that chemically react with UV light, to designs of innovative fuel cells that can produce enough electricity to power a motor or windmill for less than $200.
In the lab facilities of Tiernan Hall, Olympians engaged in the day’s “Lab Events.”
Primoris Academy lab-mates Jiwook Shin and Minkyu Son took gold in the category’s “Analytical Lab” contest, which required them to remove the copper coating from a single penny and conduct spectrophotometric analysis to precisely gauge the density of copper covering the coin’s zinc core.
“We almost ran out of time to do the analytical lab challenge, and we were actually unsure of our results because the directions for the event were somewhat left to interpretation,” said Shin. “We had decided to find the thickness of the copper layer on just one side of the penny, and the judges obviously liked what we wrote up in our lab report.”
“There was a lot of practice needed to be accurate with the instruments for this event, but it was just as important taking time and knowing that our math was sound,” said Son. “We wanted to make sure we had everything right.”
In all, Son's team took home five awards including the Platinum Crucible.
"They were so excited to learn that all the endless hours of effort were rewarded in the end,” said Katie Kim, Primoris Academy's executive director and team advisor for the competition. “But it is really not about winning...through NJCO's challenging events, our students were pushed beyond their boundaries and were challenged to think outside of the box. Our students' curiosity in chemistry exponentially grew through this competition."
“I think one of the things I liked most today was watching other people solve problems,” said Clara Kim, who will be graduating a year early this spring. “Whether they were in our event or not, it was great just seeing the way others think versus the way you would come to a solution. The different ideas here really stood out.”
For more information about the 34th Annual NJCO, as well as full list of the competition’s 2019 medal winners, participating schools, event descriptions and more, visit: http://njchemistryolympics.com.
For further details, contact: njchemistryolympics@njit.edu.
