USA Chemistry Olympiad 2006

<p>yea hopefully.
with the identification of metal. i immediately thought of calcium when i put it in water. but then i did titration, coming up with a mm of like 24... so i changed it to aluminum at the last minute (doh... totally illogical).</p>

<p>the free response was definitely a little tough. like the SCN- with silver???? i totally didnt understand that.
and the partial vapor pressure question... totally didnt know what i was doing. </p>

<p>TOTALLY was expecting to have a lot of acids+ bases on this test. but noooooo they just have to change it.</p>

<p>so how hard is it to get into this camp? im a little ancy. i hear labs arent stressed too much in the selection process... hopefully. </p>

<p>howd you all do?</p>

<p>im thinking i got like a 50/60 on the mc, and like a 80% on the free response, and half on the lab (for effort haha).</p>

<p>I'm guessing perhaps around a 55/60 on MC and anywhere from 80% to 90% on the free response, depending on how many mistakes I made, and a little more than half on the lab (CALCIUM).</p>

<p>I thought the multiple-choice and free response were pretty easy. The second lab question was especially bad. If you drop the metal in some water and it will react, making your only choice calcium. Plus, if you add some indicator to this solution, it'll turn purple, verifying the product to be Ca(OH)2.</p>

<p>You know whats the funny thing? I actually did that. Even after noticing that the metal reacted EXPLOSIVELY when added to water and that the solution turned purple when phenolphthalein was in it, I STILL put the wrong answer -__-.</p>

<p>"The second lab question was especially bad. If you drop the metal in some water and it will react, making your only choice calcium. Plus, if you add some indicator to this solution, it'll turn purple, verifying the product to be Ca(OH)2."</p>

<p>well yea, thats quite obvious, but when i tried to support that with qualitative (or quantitative? im alwasy confused on those, but i mean real data), the calculations kept coming up with a really low molar mass. Most of the others in my region had also tried to support calcium quantitatively but also yielded some very odd numbers </p>

<p>2 days! until we get the results.
footonthehill161 have you made it to the camp before?</p>