Salter’s Festival of Chemistry by Carina Chau

In May, four Shells students; Carina Chau (SHFOX), Honey Holmes (SHDUT), Jack Hayter (SHFOX) and Aria Praveen (SHBRD) went to Liverpool John Moores University to participate in the Salter’s Festival of Chemistry.

“We were extremely excited as we were going to be competing in a range of challenges showing off their chemistry skills and teamwork. It was going to be a busy day for us as we were determined to win the prize.

As soon as we arrived at the university’s prestigious labs we were faced with the 15 schools which were also taking part. The first part of the day was going to the lecture theatre and listening to Dr Bradshaw give a talk about what was to come and what sort of activities and mysteries we had to solve. We were going to be investigating the crime of the missing trophy and this was going to require all of our teamwork, problem solving and communication skills. In the second half of the day there was another challenge which was called the ‘university challenge’, it was certainly going to be a day to remember!

As soon as we got back to the labs our whole team had an organised and focused plan; we split into pairs so that we could complete the challenge at a quicker pace and then crack the code.

We had the team spirit and determination to keep us going as Honey and Aria started their first experiment by doing the chromatography experiment, which consisted of them testing which ink was used to write the code that was left behind at the crime scene. This was a fun challenge, as it showed the precision and analysis of the colours of the five inks needed to match up the ink.

After they recorded the results they swapped experiments with Jack and I, who were doing the testing of the white powders. This challenge consisted of testing five different white powders and seeing which powder reacted the same way as the powder that was found at the crime scene. So seeing how the powder would react with water and seeing if it would go cloudy with a white precipitate and seeing if the powder would go fizzy when the substance reacted with the acid.

The other experiment carried out by Honey and Aria was the testing of the unknown solutions, which involved testing five substances with universal indicator and seeing if the solution was acidic or alkaline. Once we had recorded everything, we put together a full report and crossed our fingers that we had done enough!

In the afternoon we were challenged to try and get the reaction to occur at exactly 30 seconds. This meant that we had to use another substance which would slow it down, and in this case we decided to use ice. We submerged the conical flask into the ice so that the reaction would occur in double the time that it would normally happen. In the end we got the reaction to occur at 28 seconds… better luck next time

We were very proud when it was announced in the prize ceremony that King’s had won first place!  This was a big accomplishment as we tried our best as a team and we were so happy that all the hard work had paid off. This was a very enjoyable experience and I would love to do it again and participate in another competition!