Integrated Education of Chemistry Center (CEIQ/USP) promotes 15th Regional Chemistry Olympiad in Ribeirão Preto - SP exploring the Green Chemistry thematic

The Integrated Education of Chemistry Center (CEIQ) promotes in 2017 the 15th edition of the Regional Chemistry Olympiad (ORQ), which receive high school students from different schools to Ribeirão Preto and region. Through the event, we highlight the importance of scientific dissemination, always with a current theme of great importance for the future of Society and Science - This year we approached the theme of Green Chemistry.
The ORQ is a competitive and collaborative activity and occours in two phases:

- 1st phase: the elementary school teacher selects 40 students from the three years of high school to visit the Chemistry Department. They attend a lecture on the theme of the Olympiad and they participate to demonstration experiments in the laboratory. The theme of the Olympics is different every year, with lectures and experiments related to the subject selected. In 2017, we chosen the Green Chemistry thematic. Thus, in the lecture we approach the importance of the theme, a problematic of the environment with daily exemples and the anthropic impact on the nature, besides presenting, discussing and exemplifying the 12 Principles of Green Chemistry. In the laboratory, we present experiments that exemplify how a Green Chemistry can be used in practice, for example, a water decontamination by electroflocculation. The CEIQ receives schools between February and August and the visit durations is around two hours.

- 2nd phase: the teacher of each school selects six students (two students from each high school year), who must compose a representative team of the school. A second phase includes the preparation of a collective writing of students based the theme of the Olympics and the resolution of several situations, through experience and theoretical exercises. The second phase of the Olympiad will occour in October 25 and the divulgation of the winning schools is in November.

- Parallel Olympiad: Students who participate in the first phase and aren’t chosen to participate in the second phase can be rehearsals in this modality, through the preparation of a writing or a video about the theme of the year. The best writing and video are awarded.
As schools compete among themselves, but among students and teachers, a collective production of knowledge is always a mark of commitment and the many ways of learning.
A final grade of each school consists of the average of a theoretical test, a practical test and the writing. The first three places receive trophies and medals and the two winning schools in first place (public school and private school) receive as prizes a 20-hour internship in research laboratories of the USP Chemistry Department of Ribeirão Preto, besides certificates, medals and trophies. The internship of the winning students in the laboratories, in general, occours in March of the next year to the Olympiad.

In the first phase this year, we received 70 schools and about 2500 students. For the second phase we expect to receive at least 60 schools and 3600 students for the practical and theoretical test. While the students will do the second phase activities, we will perform a dynamic with teachers, involving Green Chemistry and ways to approach the theme in the classroom, aiming to raise the students awareness on a subject matter.