Grade 11 students conduct an experiment to determine the amount of cranberry in a beverage. The experiment was a bonus portion for 40 of the more than 2,000 students from across the province competing in the recent TRU High School Chemistry Contests.

Thanks to Dr. Sharon Brewer, Associate Professor of Chemistry at TRU, for providing the following results.

The marks are in and of the over 2,000 students from all over the province who wrote the recent TRU High School Chemistry Contests, five students from the Kamloops-North Thompson school district have finished among the top three.

Held May 16, the 16th annual contest—a written test of knowledge and open to all Grade 11 and 12 Chemistry students in BC—attracted a total of 2,007 students from 75 different BC schools. Of that number, 1,421 were in Chemistry 11 and 586 were in CHEM 12. A total of 141 students from SD73 and 13 from SD27 participated.

In Chemistry 11 Honours, Jesse Mohr tied for first overall, Keegan Richter tied for second overall, and Tye Desrosiers tied for third overall. The three are students at South Kamloops Secondary and have Glen Poelzer as their teacher. All first place students including Jesse Mohr receive a TRU entrance scholarship.

In Chemistry 11, Joey Pastorek of Clearwater Secondary and Leah Hamill of Sa-Hali Secondary tied for third overall and were tied for the top spot in SD73. Pastorek’s teacher is Mike Lau and Hamill’s teacher is Gord Waterous.

In Chemistry 12, Hayley Tomkins had the best score for SD73. Her teacher is Glen Poelzer.

Organized by faculty members in the TRU Chemistry department, the contest has grown from being a small regional activity to being province-wide and attracting some of the best high school students to TRU.

As a bonus to local School District 73 Grade 11 students, about 40 are invited to write the contest at the Kamloops campus and then participate in a variety of hands-on lab experiments with TRU faculty. TRU Williams Lake also offers SD27 local students a similar experience. This year students quantified the amount of cranberry juice in commercial beverages.

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Watch a video of the Williams Lake lab experience
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZaMjM3-mreg[/youtube]
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