D-E Students are NJ Chemistry Olympians!

5/24/2017

Two teams from D-E traveled to NJIT (New Jersey Institute of Technology) to compete at the 32^nd Annual New Jersey Chemistry Olympics earlier this month. Science teacher and faculty co-advisor Dr. Marco Pagnotta explains, “This statewide competition, held at the New Jersey Institute of Technology in Newark, brings together teams from high schools throughout the state to compete in 8 different events that cover a broad swath of chemistry. Our teams started to prepare for this one-day competition in February.”

Led by Dr. Marco Pagnotta and co-advisor Ms. Hillary Lauder, also on the D-E Science Department faculty, the D-E students competed and won 3rd place in educational website design, 2nd place in research of photolithography, and 1st place in laboratory demonstration of iron in water.

For the educational website design, students needed to design a website that informs the visitors on the chemistry involved in performance enhancing drugs. The website was judged for the content as well as the design itself--requiring both scientific knowledge and creativity.

For the photolithography research, students needed to conduct a research addressing topics regarding photolithography as given by NJIT, conduct another original research following the NJIT’s experiment instructions, and finally, the students gave a PowerPoint presentation of their understanding and research data.

For the iron in water laboratory demonstration, students needed to research a procedure to quantify the iron concentration in water prior to the event. During the event, students gave a live demonstration and presented their findings to judges within the 75-minutes time constraint.

Below is the list of students recognized at the 2017 New Jersey Chemistry Olympics:

Srikar Donapudi ’17, Manny Jimenez ’17 and Chris Liu ’17 won third place for their educational website design.

Kira Trout ’18, Maggie Chow ’18 and Valerie Wang ’18 won second place for the photolithography research.

Marwah Kiani ’18 and Ethan Pusch ’18 won first place for the laboratory demonstration.

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