Analytical Chemistry Challenge

By Mr Graeme Poleweski, Science Laboratory Technician

At the end of October, three Radford College students, Cyrus French, Suhas Dudaga and Willsy Tierney, participated in the inaugural Analytical Chemistry Challenge, hosted by the University of Canberra and organised through the Royal Australian Chemical Institute (RACI).

In this challenge, students were presented with a mock murder case and an entire back story to use as clues in order to identify, among others, the murder weapon, victim whereabouts, time of the murder and whereabouts of suspects. How did they answer these questions? With science, of course! Multiple stations were set up around the aptly named “Mega Lab” where students would perform things like qualitative analyses on small residue found at the scene of the crime, blood typing analysis, comprehension of the police case files, spectral analyses and titration analysis.

Cyrus, Suhas and Willsy performed exceptionally well and were able to solve aspects of the investigation. This was the inaugural Analytical Chemistry Challenge and due to its overwhelming success, there’s sure to be more in the future. If this is something you would be interested in, be sure to keep an eye on Nexus for future competitions.