SENIOR SCHOOL
Winning at Titrations
Guildford Grammar School has
experienced the most success ever in the
2018 Titration Stakes Competition with
the help of Mrs Siza Macdonald and Miss
Gemma Haddleton. With their support, we
developed our titration skills over the course
of Term 2 and 3 to perfect our techniques.
On Friday afternoons, we undertook
the challenge of the titrations activity,
competing for selection in the state heats
held at Curtin University on the evening of
Tuesday 19 June, 2018.
The School entered three teams on the
evening, each working in teams of three,
completing four titrations in two hours
using many precise glassware instruments
including expensive burettes and pipettes.
The three Guildford Grammar School teams
consisted of the following students:
• Team 1 – Daniel Wee, Damian
Sakellaris and Jonathon Choong
• Team 2 – Nicholas Trease,
Jai Coutinho and Simon McDowall
• Team 3 – Duke Gordon,
Aiden Shearing and Laurie Todd
With much anticipation we finally received
our results out of over 100 teams. The
Guildford Grammar School teams placed as
follows; Team 3 - 9th position, Team 1 – 8th
position and Team 2 - 1st position.
All three teams advanced to the State and
National finals, the first time ever the School
has had all three teams moving through to
the next round. In the next stage we were
titrating individually, and our results would
be accumulated, contrary to the initial
competition.
So it was back to Mrs Macdonald’s room,
titrating again for weeks, perfecting our
skills and individually completing two
titrations and making up our own solutions.
At first it was daunting but closer to the
competition we knew we were ready.
The three teams were confident as we
arrived at Murdoch University on 29
August, after enjoying the traditional pre-
competition HJ’s run. After calculating our
results, we submitted them as a group and
we were each told whether we achieved a
silver or gold medallion. We were ecstatic
to find that our results ranked our three
teams 4th, 3rd and 2nd consecutively, with
all three teams gaining an ‘Excellent Team’
status. The results were as follows:
4th
– Duke Gordon – gold
– Aiden Shearing – gold
– Laurie Todd – silver
3rd
– Daniel Wee – gold
– Jonathan Choong – gold
– Damian Sakellaris – gold
2nd
– Nicholas Trease – gold
– Jai Couthino – gold
– Simon Mcdowall – gold
We were very pleased with our results and
the efforts we made over the year. We
recommend Titrations as a Friday afternoon
activity to all Chemistry students as it
prepares them for the skills and techniques
needed for this challenging course.
Laurie Todd and Duke Gordon
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