Kapnayan, a triennial week-long nationwide Chemistry fair hosted by the UPLB Chemical Society, will be held online for the first time since 1976. Despite the limitations brought by the pandemic, the organizers pushed through this year’s event with the title and theme The Prescribed Dose: Immunizing Minds Through Chemical Literacy Against the Infodemic. It will be held on February 7-12, 2022 via online platforms and had been recognized by the Department of Education as per Advisory No. 075, s. 2021.
Different activities will be featured during the week-long event which include webinars, online exhibits, audio-visual presentations, science writing contest, infographic making contest, virtual escape room, idea pitching competition, and ideathon.
The first major event is entitled Start-Up, CHEM-Up: A Kapnayan Pitch Competition where different school representatives present a detailed pitch on how to address different societal problems using the subject focus. Meanwhile, the other major event is entitled Top of the Flask: A Kapnayan Ideathon, which involves creating an extemporaneous pitch deck on how to tackle a specific context-based problem on chemical literacy. Aside from these major competitions, there will also be science-writing contest and infographic-making contest where students showcase their literary composition skills as well as their ability to integrate chemical literacy in information dissemination, respectively. A virtual escape room contest entitled The Last Element Standing will also be held to provide a fun experience for the participants by having them undergo various prepared challenges to be solved under time pressure. Each of the contests will have corresponding cash prizes depending on the contest category.
A total of 44 secondary high schools from different parts of the country will be competing for the said competitions.
Kapnayan 2022 will not only offer a competitive avenue for the students. This January 24, an online exhibit will be open to showcase different details about the Chemistry fair, and on February 7, a webinar will also be held which will be entitled “Infoveillance: A Webinar about Chemical Literacy”.
Through these, the organizers are aiming to emphasize the role of Chemistry and the sciences in addressing social and economic problems and to promote chemical literacy to 21st-century learners. Moreover, this also highlights STEM and teaches the youth in using it as an instrument to dismantle misinformation in a world where fake news and misinformation have become rampant.
Learn more about us at bit.ly/KAP2022Primer or visit us at https://www.facebook.com/kapnayan.chemsoc/.
