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Titration Comp (1 Viewer)

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wanton-wonton said:
Chemistry really shits me.
yeah, but i also like it a bit. it's better than some of my other subjects.
i feel like a bit of a geek/nerd for actually going. but i have to say, it was kinda fun. in a way. so yeah !

meLoncoLLie said:
too much indicator could stuff up your results for you, yes. the recommended amount for titration is around 3-5 drops - i always add 5 drops for acetic acid :) it makes the solution in the conical flask a very nice dark pink, which helps a lot in determining the colour change

we got our individual scores as well as the team's score. my score was 9, so that means i was off by 0.0003 (is that right?)

i'm not sure what the worst score at our venue was, but a team from SBHS got that. i vaguely remember the worst score from my school being 40000+ (lol!), so it has to be higher than that.
oh ok.

oh cool =] that's so close... ! i want to know what my score was! bet you i was the most off in my group. sigh...

are you serious, 40 000+ or 4 000+ ?? 40 000 is pretty high. but since it grows exponentially, meh...
 

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table for 1 said:
oh cool =] that's so close... ! i want to know what my score was! bet you i was the most off in my group. sigh...

are you serious, 40 000+ or 4 000+ ?? 40 000 is pretty high. but since it grows exponentially, meh...
didn't you get to look at the marked results sheets after the comp? that's how we found out our scores.

i think it was 40000+, a guy got 40000 (200^2), so yeah.
 

table for 1

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meLoncoLLie said:
didn't you get to look at the marked results sheets after the comp? that's how we found out our scores.

i think it was 40000+, a guy got 40000 (200^2), so yeah.
er... see... there were so many ppl crowding around to see the scroe sheets the lady waas holding. so my friend squished through and i guess all she looked at was the final score
 

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oh, that's too bad. but i think they'll send the scores to your school later on anyway.

i wonder how all the schools went. all i know is shore pwned us and sydney boys, and sydney tech got pwned by st george girls.
 
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alrighty, cool. thanks =]

i've run out of things to dicuss of the comp.

oh, what was the biggest mistake you saw someone do?

i saw nothing major. though someone knocked over their solution. and someone dropped their flask into the sink, so it cracked. and then there were those chicks who got hot pink. and when i say hot pink, i mean hot pink.
 

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meLoncoLLie said:
i wonder how all the schools went. all i know is shore pwned us and sydney boys, and sydney tech got pwned by st george girls.
yeah. who goes to burwood girls? and fort st? and... can't think of any schools i know ppl from....
 

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ahahahaha. you wanna hear about dumb things that happened in the comp? here goes.

after i'd finished pipetting the HCl, my teammate took the beaker from me and began pipetting too. when we both got to the acetic acid part, she used up all her acetic acid in one titration (i have nfi why), so she said to me, 'hey can i just use your acid again?' i (very stupidly) said 'sure, here you go' and handed her MY acetic acid (which of course is a different concentration to hers!) luckily she realised what moronic things we had done before she began her 2nd titration.

and i confess that i broke a beaker when i was cleaning up :( so embarrassing. luckily the coordinator was very nice and forgave me.

my friend from sydney tech told me that one of the guys from his school spilled another teammate's NAOH in the nationals last year. (you have to MAKE your own standard solution in the nationals). so the poor guy had to estimate how much he had spilt and make up a figure. luckily he got a very very good score in the end.
 

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Well done guys, hope you all went well.
Though I think I stuffed it up :p I still had heaps of fun.
We did ours at macq uni today.
One of our teams got 104 for 4th place and 14 for 1st place.
<3

P.S HIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII glo!
 
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heyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy jan!

i wish we did it at MQ, i've decided that i want to study there next year, could've checked the campus out.

shore was absolutely amazing, all of their teams got under 200. oh well, the fact that our school has better equipment and more modern science labs makes me feel better :p
 

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meLoncoLLie said:
ahahahaha. you wanna hear about dumb things that happened in the comp? here goes.

after i'd finished pipetting the HCl, my teammate took the beaker from me and began pipetting too. when we both got to the acetic acid part, she used up all her acetic acid in one titration (i have nfi why), so she said to me, 'hey can i just use your acid again?' i (very stupidly) said 'sure, here you go' and handed her MY acetic acid (which of course is a different concentration to hers!) luckily she realised what moronic things we had done before she began her 2nd titration.

and i confess that i broke a beaker when i was cleaning up :( so embarrassing. luckily the coordinator was very nice and forgave me.
haha... that sounds like something i would do! i think maybe your friend used too much acetic acid to rinse her pipette? my friend tends to do that. she fills the entire pipette with solution, instead of just a bit, to rinse. we corrected her.

but anyways, my friend finished early, and so she was doing the calculations. and then we were checking hers. and i got a completely different answer. and this was in the last 10 mins, so by now, we were very panicky. and then i checked the others, and i couldn't think straight because of the time pressure. but and they were all different ! and so yeah, some more panicking. and then we realised that i totally stuffed up, because i thought the concentration of HCl was 0.1M, when it was 0.1234M or something along those lines. so luckily, we changed it in time. think how stuffed we would have been if they listened to me.

meLoncoLLie said:
my friend from sydney tech told me that one of the guys from his school spilled another teammate's NAOH in the nationals last year. (you have to MAKE your own standard solution in the nationals). so the poor guy had to estimate how much he had spilt and make up a figure. luckily he got a very very good score in the end.
wow. that's all i have to say.

ps. i'm so slow to reply. so sorry !

meLoncoLLie said:
shore was absolutely amazing, all of their teams got under 200. oh well, the fact that our school has better equipment and more modern science labs makes me feel better :p
wow... all the groups from my school got above 200 ... even the super smart students who always get so unbelievably high in every single exam. but i guess it's practically and skills, not knowledge, but still.
 

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~ ReNcH ~ said:
I think their score was 120 (not too sure on that though). I know that 2nd and 3rd were tied though with a score of 141. How on earth do you get a score of 25, let alone 1?
They got lucky.

Last year top score at my venue was 14. And that was all they told us.
 

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Templar said:
They got lucky.

Last year top score at my venue was 14. And that was all they told us.
lol.
I thought 120-140 was good, but now after reading all of these I'm rethinking it.
So in other words, the teams at my venue were crap and had JRAHS gone to Macq. U they would've got wasted?
 

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I am interested to know what the titrations were etc. and how much time was allowed. Mainly because even if EVERYONE in chemistry did the titration comp. we still wouldn't have enough for a team ~ let alone a decent one.
 
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that was a heaps fun competition imo, while most people went there trivially you can tell the full pro groups really did great work, i did all 8 titrates in the 60 minutes, one member from my team that came late she started to pour NaOH in the burette and didnt realise the tap was open after like ~10mL D:
 
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Jumbo Cactuar said:
I am interested to know what the titrations were etc. and how much time was allowed. Mainly because even if EVERYONE in chemistry did the titration comp. we still wouldn't have enough for a team ~ let alone a decent one.
given:
- known concentration of HCl solution
- unknown of NaOH [except mine had a label on it with the concentration. except that was different to what we calculated]
- 3 flasks of unknown concentrations of acetic acid, labelled A, B and C. one for each person in the team
- phenolphthalein
- i don't know if you have to bring your own equipment if you go to a uni, but i went to a school, so we did. some stuff [eg. retort stand] they provide

what you do:
- titrate HCl with NaOH. minimum 2 readins, max = 4
- titrate acetic acid with NaOh. min = 2, max = 4
- average and work out concentration of NaOH, then the concentration of acetic acid

each person does all of the above, at the same time as each other. all in 90mins. except we were all allowed an extra 10 mins to finish off calculations.

supervisors don't care about your crappy techniques, only the results sheet which you write all your titrations and concentrations of acetic acid on. they will only make sure you're not somehow cheating or whatever.

anything i failed to answer? [not being sarcastic or anything]

Casmira said:
one member from my team that came late she started to pour NaOH in the burette and didnt realise the tap was open after like ~10mL D:
yep, my friend did that too. except not as much as 10mL.
 

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Oh, ok, thought it might have been a bit more exciting. Sounds reasonable. Last titration I did was 6 hours of fun! Only 18 seperate chemicals on 12 pages of method :p

I wouldn't worry about breaking a beaker ... they are perhaps the most innacurate and inprecise peices of glassware around, hence they cost very little. Anyone see a burette get broken? That would have been embarrassing. Beakers have it coming for being shitty.
 

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Jumbo Cactuar said:
Oh, ok, thought it might have been a bit more exciting. Sounds reasonable. Last titration I did was 6 hours of fun! Only 18 seperate chemicals on 12 pages of method :p

I wouldn't worry about breaking a beaker ... they are perhaps the most innacurate and inprecise peices of glassware around, hence they cost very little. Anyone see a burette get broken? That would have been embarrassing. Beakers have it coming for being shitty.
Actually yes :p
One girl in the winning team broke the burette, thank god it's from the school..
but yeh, I think the burette cracked and the tap fell off LOL!
 

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table for 1 said:
each person does all of the above, at the same time as each other. all in 90mins. except we were all allowed an extra 10 mins to finish off calculations.
Was everybody in the state given that extra 10 minutes, or was it only the teams at PLC?
 

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The one at newcastle uni sucked. We didn't know the concentration of the HCl and it didn't matter because we had the concentration of the NaOH. So there was really no point of doing the HCl titration. Plus there's only one selective school in Newcastle, which means we got like the top 5 places.
 

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