Chemistry Night 2008

As a celebration of National Chemistry Week, the Saint Mary's University Chemistry Department held its annual Chemistry Night on October 23rd and 30th. We had a full house on both evenings with 45 high school students participating and over 20 SMU students assisting. The following schools had students attend: Winona Senior High School, Lewiston-Altura High School, John Marshall High School, Cochrane-Fountain City High School, Cotter High School, LaCrescent High School, Lourdes High School and Westby High School.

Students had the opportunity, working in teams of three, to solve chemical problems with the theme, "Having a Ball with Chemistry", a theme based on chemistry and sports during this Olympic year. The students were able to have hands-on exposure to various wet chemistry and chemical instrumentation, as well as seeing some wild chemical demonstrations (lots of explosions and excitement). Saint Mary's chemistry students assisted the high school students as they tried to solve each of the challenging problems.

Our SMU professors developed a storyline in which the hig school students were investigators that were hired by an athlete advisory commission to investigate and solve the following problems:
1. Use infrared spectroscopy to identify materials used for sports activities and facilities.
2. Analyze several sport drinks and types of water for an estimate of their electrolyte content, and then quantitatively measure certain electrolyte ion concetration.
3. Understand what cross-linking does to the properties of superballs and make a ball that has the highest bounce.
4. Determine if "urine" samples give evidence of anti-doping behavior.
5. Determine if "urine" samples have surpassed the caffeine limit by quantifying the amount of caffeine in samples by UV-VIS spectroscopy.
6. Determine the iron intake of a breakfast food product using the technique of FAAS (flame atomic absorption spectroscopy)

After completeing all of the experiments, the students were treated to wonderful demonstrations put together by the Saint Mary's Physical Chemistry Class. The evening concluded with desserts, conversation, and awards. This year the 1st place winners received a $2000 scholarship for each year they attend SMU, 2nd place winners received a $1000 scholarship for the same duration and 3rd place winners received a $500 scholarship for the same duration.

For the night of October 23rd, first place was awarded to Cochrane-Fountain City H.S.: Ben Suhr, Colin Markowitz, and Jim Joswick. Second place was awarded to Lourdes H.S.: Minh Nguyen, Katherine Kelsey, and Morgan Rea. Third place was awarded to LaCrescent H.S.: Karly Rasmusson, Josh Bear and Nathan Ferrier.

For the night of October 30th, first place was awarded to Lewiston-Altura H.S.: Landon Clark, Joe McMartin, and Matt Schultz. Second place was awarded to Winona Senior H.S.: Isabella Albright and Olivia Eckolf. Third place was awarded to John Marshal H.S.: Julia Lee, Matt Thielen, and Rachel Tamminga.

The Chemistry Department wishes to thank the LaCrosse/Winona ACS Local Section and the Fugere Family Foundation for their generous support of Chemistry Night. We all look forward to next year's National Chemistry Week theme, "Chemistry - It's Elemental!"