The University of Waikato’s annual New Zealand Institute of Chemistry (NZIC) Analytical Chemistry Competition saw Aquinas College awarded second place.
The event, held on Wednesday 14 June, challenged 92 enthusiastic Year 13 students to spend a day in the University’s chemistry laboratories, where they worked on an experiment. Schools from the Bay of Plenty region produced excellent results on the day, with Tauranga Boy’s College coming first and Tauranga Girls’ College achieving third place.
This year’s competition challenged students to analyse the individual levels of zinc and sulphate ions in a sample of zinc sulphate and to use these values to determine how many water molecules were associated with each zinc sulphate molecule. One pair from each group of four used a gravimetric procedure to find the sulphate ion content, while the other half of the team used a volumetric method to find the zinc ion level.
Twenty-three teams of four students from 22 schools across the Waikato and Bay of Plenty entered this year’s competition. Rivalry was fierce but the main emphasis was enjoying the experience and meeting students from other schools. The competition was sponsored by New Zealand Institute of Chemistry’s Waikato branch and Hill Laboratories.
The team of Jarod Schneebeli, Alexander Hawkes, Jamie Sutherland, and Aileen Harwood was awarded prize money for their achievements.
