Students create spark at first Chemathon competition

On Saturday, April 28,  North Harford competed in their first Chemathon competition. The Hawks split up into two teams: the level one team and the level two team.

The level one team is made up of beginner chemistry students while the level two team is made up of advanced chemistry students.

   These students had to take on several challenges in smaller teams of two. The advanced level teams were Brooke Rickey and Sara Ortt, the other advanced level team was Ali Hoppa and Cindy Zang. These teams were advised by Beth Brown.

    The beginner teams were split with Heather King and Sydney Altman on one team, and Hannah Leyne and Kaitlyn Fannin on the other. This team was advised by Christine Jestel.

    Chemathon is an event that requires extreme preparation, Rickey says that they prepared by doing “all the different experiments in advance to figure out which solutions we needed to use and which ones we needed to change.” She adds, “We also did a lot of studying and memorizing of all different aspects we needed for the different events themselves.” King said, “We will definitely prepare more, starting at the beginning of the year;  we will form a team earlier on.”

The teams jumped right in, facing some unexpected things. Brown says “some of the events that we planned for were different than what we thought they were going to be from the instructions that we were given.” Heather King agreed when and stated “Sometimes we went in not exactly knowing what to expect.”

    There are also many challenges students had to face at chemathon, Rickey says the most challenging part of the day was “getting the solutions right.” She said this because they faced so many schools that had competed in the past and already had solutions, but they had to start from scratch.  Altman said the most challenging part was “the transition metals and the day before, packing everything and being organized.” Brown added that she and Jestel “had to sit in a room and grade really boring labs the whole time.” Brown explained that it was challenging because she wanted to see how her team was doing.

    As far as competing in the future, Altman said they could work on “more preparation” and Brown agrees.  “Next year I think that we probably should start practicing a little bit earlier and have regular practices throughout the year instead of practicing so much towards Chemathon. Considering the time the team had Brown believes “the girls jumped right in with both feet and they were really excited and passionate about it.”