Chemagination, a contest for high school students was held on Saturday, March 28, 2009 at the Carl A. Fields Center of Princeton University.  This is an annual competition jointly sponsored by the Princeton and Trenton Sections of the ACS.  Students, working in teams of two or three members, are required to write an article for ChemMatters, an ACS publication, about an invention 25 years in the future that positively impact peoples lives. The articles must fit in one of four categories: Alternate Energy, Medicine and Healthcare, New Materials or Environment.  The teams also must prepare a poster display and defend their invention during an interview by judges on the day of the competition.

 This year we had teams from Hunterdon Central Regional High School, Hopewell Valley Central High School, Delaware Valley Regional High School, West Windsor-Plainsboro High School North and West Windsor-Plainsboro High School South.  Fourteen teams, totaling thirty-eight students participated in the event.  This years winners are:

 

 First Place

 “Grass Gas”, Shawn Carrick, Alex Huang and Samir Koppolu, West Windsor-Plainsboro High School South, Alternate Energy Category.

 “Tooth Decay? No Such Thing!”, Isha Desai and Ishaan Desai, Hunterdon Central Regional High School, Medicine and Healthcare Category

 “Coral Copulation”, Abishy Pandita, Jason Tam and Kevin Zhang, West Windsor-Plainsboro High School North, Environment or New Materials

 

Second Place

 “Microbial Fuel Cells: The Miracle Battery?”, Shir Aharon, Tracie Kong and Louisa Ying, West Windsor-Plainsboro High School North, Alternate Energy Category.

 “Ethatonin: Ending Drunk Driving”, Iana Karadjova, Rui Yu and Hannah Yue, Hopewell Valley Central High School Medicine and Healthcare Category

 “To See or Not To See”, Srividya Suresh, Natasha Patel and Katherine Wu, West Windsor-Plainsboro High School North, Environment or New Materials Category

 

We wish to thank our judges Dr. Barbara Ameer, Dr. Dinshaw Bardoliwalla, Dr. James DeNoble, Dr. Jinping Gan, Dr. Allen N. Jones, Dr. Randy A. Weintraub and Dr. Duxi Zhang for their time and dedication. They had the difficult task of selecting the winners from among the many high quality entries.

 We also wish to thank the faculty advisors Dr. Dan Allen (Hunterdon Central Regional High School), Dr. Lillian Rankel (Hopewell Valley Central High School), Ms Carol Peabody (Delaware Valley Regional High School), Ms Julie Norato (West Windsor-Plainsboro High School North), and Ms Karen Galley, West Windsor-Plainsboro High School South for the time, encouragement and support they gave their students.