This school year, ten Weaver Middle School students participated in the national “You Be the Chemist Challenge” sponsored by the Chemical Education Foundation. “You Be the Chemist” is an interactive academic contest that encourages students in grades 5 – 8 to explore chemistry concepts and their real-world applications.
In preparation for this contest, the Weaver students were organized into small teams. All teams spent several lunch periods learning high school-level chemistry concepts. Then in January, they attended the regional competition in Dublin, Ohio where they answered extremely difficult chemistry questions in a game show-style format. In this competition, the 7th-grade team of Colton Granchi, Asher and Beckett Bollinger, and Tyler Melchiorre took 1st place. The 7th grade team of Ishan and Aryan Pavuluri and Shehzad Fahmi took 2nd place. The 8th grade team including Adler Granson, Charley O’Brien, and Gabe Pacheco took 3rd place. In actuality, only one correct answer determined the winner; it was very close!
Additionally, 2 of the 3 groups spent the months of February and March creating a video addressing the theme of this year’s competition: Develop a sustainable solution to a local natural disaster. The results of the January competition and an evaluation of their submitted videos by the CEF staff were combined to determine each team’s score and percentile rank. For this year’s “You Be the Chemist Challenge”, Weaver’s 7th-grade team of Ishan, Aryan, and Shehzad scored in the top 22 percentile in the State and the 8th-grade team scored in the top 35 percentile!
The amount of time these students spent to extend their knowledge, engage in scientific learning, and make their videos was truly impressive! Congratulations to all of them for their successes!
