SENIOR SCHOOL
Titrations success – students’ perspective
Guildford Grammar School has experienced sustained success at
the Titration Stakes competition over the past few years under the
guidance of Mrs Siza Macdonald. With her support we worked on
our titration skills over the course of Term 2 in order to perfect our
techniques for this year’s competition. On Friday afternoons, we
undertook our own titrations challenge, battling it out for selection
in the state heats held at Curtin University on the evening of Tuesday
20 June.
We entered three teams on the evening, including a Year 11 team
who should now be in a good position for next year’s competition.
The teams worked together on the evening in their teams of three
to work out the varying concentrations of three different acetic acid
solutions. The three Guildford Grammar School teams consisted of
the following students:
• Team 1 – Joel Moffet (12Fr), Archie Shaw (12Fr) and
Matthew Simmonds (12Fr)
• Team 2 – Daniel Irvin (12Ha), Thomas Stanicich (12He) and
Ryan Wijayananda (12SG)
• Team 3 – Jonathan Choong (11Fr), Damian Sakellaris (11SG)
and Daniel Wee (11Fr)
Upon all three teams finishing, we were able to discuss our results
and enjoy some finger food whilst waiting for all of the teams to
finish and the results to be calculated. With much anticipation
we received the results of over 80 teams. The Guildford Grammar
School teams placed as follows; Team 3 placed in 32nd position,
Team 1 in 24th and Team 2 in 3rd position, with an error of just
0.000000118.
After receiving some awards we were informed that Team 2
would be advancing to the state and national finals. Not only this,
but would unfortunately be titrating individually with the results
being accumulated contrary to the initial competition and our
understanding. So we embarked on another 10 weeks of perfecting
our skills in a somewhat trickier individual effort, which also involved
the preparation of our own solutions.
Ever confident, we arrived at Murdoch University after enjoying
the traditional pre-competition Maccas run. After obtaining and
calculating our results a little over half way through the evening, we
began the waiting process which again involved small talk and finger
food. We were somewhat disappointed with our result of 6th place
statewide ranking as an ‘Excellent Team’ despite Daniel achieving
a near perfect score with an inaccuracy of one part per million; the
equal best result in the competition. Upon reflection we were quite
unlucky, as we all received gold medals which would usually place
you highly across the nation.
Overall the competition provided a forum to challenge ourselves
and improve our practical chemistry skills. We would encourage any
chemistry students to get involved with the titration stakes, as it is
also beneficial for practical work conducted in Year 12 chemistry,
which contributes a significant portion towards your mark.
Team 2 in the lab.
22
By Daniel Irvin (12Ha) and Thomas Stanicich (12He)