UM-Flint Wins 2015 Battle of the Chem Clubs!

The University of Michigan Flint’s Chemistry Club beat out twelve other teams to claim first place in the statewide Battle of the Chem Clubs, held at Michigan State University on January 31, 2015.

Chem Club President Alex Rizo provided the following narrative of the team’s experience:

9 chem club members and 1 faculty member/advisor went to Michigan State University to compete in Battle of the Chem Clubs.  There were 12 teams from different Universities in Michigan including Kalamazoo College, Wayne State University, Oakland University and Albion.  The competition was all day and consisted of 4 preliminary rounds.  These rounds including building the longest nylon polymer, amino acid word scramble, solving radioactive decay problems, and shooting darts at the periodic table.  Only 4 members of the team were allowed to compete during each round. These rounds determined the order going into quarterfinals which was a titration race. Based upon where you placed you go to start first. We placed 7 out of 10 going into quarterfinals. After finishing quarterfinals we made the cut to semifinals by placing 6, the top 6 teams moved to seminfinals.  During semifinals, a murder mystery case had to be solved by receiving clues and answering different chemistry questions. We finished second for semifinals so we moved onto to finals! Finals consisted of three teams playing Chemistry Jeopardy. Let me just tell you that Jeopardy was intense, we started off good then went down in the middle, almost lost a double jeopardy because of the way we said the answer. Needless to say two teams were tied at the end of Jeopardy, UM-Flint and Hillsdale. Both schools wagered everything so the winner would come down to this answer. Hillsdale answered wrong so it came down to us. We ended up spelling the answer wrong so all schools ended up with 0 at the end. To decide the winner, a photo contest had been completed before the competition to be used as a tie breaker in the quarterfinals. UM-Flint beat Hillsdale in the photo contest, so we WON! UM-Flint is the only school to win the silver separator funnel trophy three times since BCC has started. It was a super exciting and fun filled day, more fun than I thought. This was my first year competing and I will definitely be going again next year. We also won the Michigan Goggle Face (#MIgoggleface) photo contest, which UM-Flint started as a way to bring awareness to science through the use of pictures.

Congratulations to our team for their unprecedented three-peat victory!

For more information on the UM-Flint Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, visit their website. To learn more about Chem Club co-advisor and Department Chair Dr. Jessica Tischler, read her CAS Faculty Spotlight profile.

You can follow the Chemistry Club by “liking” their Facebook page.