Chem Lab C

[Megatron]

Can't wait to get rid of electrochem...and hopefully periodicity. I hope they put kinetics in as well, it goes well with equilibrium and you can have a lot more connections.

[quizbowl]

What was the lab for NY?

Teams were given a bunch of stickers with names of colleges on them, and a sort of periodic table-shaped grid. Based on various information they were given about the colleges (size, location, degrees offered, etc), they were supposed to arrange the stickers into a "periodic table" of colleges.

The worst part was the way it was scored: you got one point for each sticker placed correctly – so even if you got the correct trends, if you shifted them one over somehow, you got no points. The top teams all did very poorly on this event.

Not exactly - 6th place Brighton got 1st, 4th place Columbia got 4th and 3rd place Syosset got 6th. And over the past few years, Chem Lab seems to be one of the events least likely to be medaled in if the team places in the top tier. So really, the fact that a few medals ranked in the top 6 is more remarkable than last year, where only Half Hollow Hills got a medal in the top 10.
But yes, I will concur, the lab was ludicrous.

[Phenylethylamine]

What was the lab for NY?

Teams were given a bunch of stickers with names of colleges on them, and a sort of periodic table-shaped grid. Based on various information they were given about the colleges (size, location, degrees offered, etc), they were supposed to arrange the stickers into a "periodic table" of colleges.

The worst part was the way it was scored: you got one point for each sticker placed correctly – so even if you got the correct trends, if you shifted them one over somehow, you got no points. The top teams all did very poorly on this event.

Not exactly - 6th place Brighton got 1st, 4th place Columbia got 4th and 3rd place Syosset got 6th. And over the past few years, Chem Lab seems to be one of the events least likely to be medaled in if the team places in the top tier. So really, the fact that a few medals ranked in the top 6 is more remarkable than last year, where only Half Hollow Hills got a medal in the top 10.
But yes, I will concur, the lab was ludicrous.

I suppose I was exaggerating based on the fact that FM and Ward Melville both tanked spectacularly, despite both schools having very good people on the event (no, I was not one of them). Chem Lab really shouldn't be a particularly high-variance event, but it seems to be.

I did Chem Lab at States last year, though; that was a hard event, with significant time pressure (and we got very little glassware and a broken pipette bulb, but oh well). I'd say the time and the restricted materials were probably the biggest factors in shaking up the scores so much.

[Flavorflav]

What was the lab for NY?

Teams were given a bunch of stickers with names of colleges on them, and a sort of periodic table-shaped grid. Based on various information they were given about the colleges (size, location, degrees offered, etc), they were supposed to arrange the stickers into a "periodic table" of colleges.

The worst part was the way it was scored: you got one point for each sticker placed correctly – so even if you got the correct trends, if you shifted them one over somehow, you got no points. The top teams all did very poorly on this event.

Not exactly - 6th place Brighton got 1st, 4th place Columbia got 4th and 3rd place Syosset got 6th. And over the past few years, Chem Lab seems to be one of the events least likely to be medaled in if the team places in the top tier. So really, the fact that a few medals ranked in the top 6 is more remarkable than last year, where only Half Hollow Hills got a medal in the top 10.
But yes, I will concur, the lab was ludicrous.

Actually, Stuyvesant (10th overall) got 4th that year as well. Also, there were only two top ten teams that did not score in the top 20 in this event, as compared to 4 this year. Still, you have a valid point - the results were not quite as unusual as the performance of WM and FM suggest. As you say, though, the lab was ludicrous.

[XXGeneration]

So how do people feel about the new topic being equilibrium and periodicity?

I think that equilibrium is a good idea, but there's too many types of equilibrium. So many things, like acid-base, solubility, hetero/homogeneous equilibrium, can be counted as equilibrium. I do like that equilibrium can have much harder questions than some other topics, and that it can have some good labs.

[mintyfrash]

I'm iffy on equilibrium, on the one hand I feel like yes, it is a huge amount of information covered within the topic, on the other hand, I feel like there are fewer "random" questions which could be asked about equilibrium. Like for electrochem we had "fuel cells and common storage batteries" as a supplementary subject for states/nationals, and I mean there's so much which could be asked about that. Didn't show up on the test for nationals at all though...

[buzzbuzz]

Does anybody know of any good equilibrium labs that are manageable with the limited amount of time? The ones I know of wouldn't be very practical.

[liutony66]

So I'm not completely clear on what exactly ''equilibrium" will cover. I understand that equilibrium is when a system is essentially balanced, but in which contexts is this referring to?

I see that you say there can be a wide variety of things covered, could you give a couple more examples?

[2000lby]

Acid-base (weak acids/bases), solubility, vapor pressure...probably not thermo?

Maybe an equilibrium lab using FeSCN2+ or some solubility lab? I can't think of any practical non-aqueous equilibrium labs off of the top of my head...except maybe NO2 <=> N2O4

[butter side up]

Would doing a simply titration with, for example, NaOH and acetic acid, be an option? Then you have a form of acid/ base equilibrium. Then one could do molar calcualtions, etc.