Authors: Faculty of Science, Siti Nurliyana Binti Baharudin, Eng Qi Qi & Ng Mei Jie
From 17th November 2021 to 15th December 2021, American Chemical Society, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, International Student Chapter (ACS UTM ISC) organized a programme entitled Chemistry Innovation Challenge 2.0 (CIC 2.0).
This programme was open to all undergraduate students of local universities.
A series of 3 different events: Quiz, 3D Model Crafting Competition and Poster Design Competition were organized. They were conducted virtually through online platforms: Facebook, Instagram and Quizizz.
The objective of this programme was to break the stereotypical point of view that chemistry is dull and solely academic-oriented. It also intended to boost passion and enthusiasm toward chemistry among the students themselves.
The three events did not only assess the students’ understanding of chemistry theories, but also discover participants’ crafting and graphic designing skills.
The program started with the first event, ChemiTalk. ChemiTalk was held to share chemistry-related topics with students and to educate them about the application of chemistry in daily life, via video recording.
This event began with recruiting volunteer speakers to record a 3 to 5 minutes video of informative topics related to chemistry.
On 28th November 2021, two best videos were selected and shared on ACS UTM ISC social media together with the ChemiTalk Quiz.
The speakers for the videos were from the Faculty of Science UTM. ‘Solving Crimes with Chemistry’ was presented by Ms. Shamalah a/p Arumugam. Mr. Cheng Yi Xuan came up with a video entitled ‘Nobel Prize Winners in Chemistry’.
During the quiz session, the questions were designed from the speakers’ videos. The quiz was open for participation from 28th November to 10th December 2021 through online platforms, Google Form and Quizizz.
The second event was the 3D Model Crafting Competition. The participants had to build a 3D model of their favorite chemical element/compound using any materials available.
The objective of this event was to stimulate creativity and innovation among undergraduates. Participants had to submit photos of their models together with a short essay explaining why those are their favorite compound.
The last event held was the Poster Design Competition. Participants had to design a poster by personificating three elements from the periodic table based on their creativity along with the element properties, usage and other relevant information.
This event aimed to discover artistic talent among students and to encourage the students to unearth the perks of learning chemistry in a more fun and exciting way.
The winners for all 3 events of CIC 2.0 were announced on 15th December 2021.
In short, this program was considered a success as there were a total of 42 participants, in which 11 of them are from other universities.
All participants really gave it all out and did their best in each of the competitions.
ACS UTM ISC hoped that the participants enjoyed the process throughout the programme and learned new chemistry knowledge outside of the classroom.