DGS Science Club has been crowned the overall winner of an international competition for chemistry-themed Christmas trees – or chemistrees. It impressed judges with its original design and construction from chemical elements. The tree’s twisted copper wire trunk and branches support multi-coloured foliage made of borax. It incorporates several different elements: copper, sodium, boron, oxygen and hydrogen, coloured with traces of iron, copper and manganese.

The competition organiser and lead judge John O’Donoghue, a Royal Society of Chemistry education coordinator at Trinity College Dublin, said, ‘We thought it was by far the most unusual one out of all the entries,’ and ‘It has redefined what a chemistree needs to look like and clearly took a lot of time to make. It’s also got a lot of different [chemical] elements.’ 

This year’s competition saw chemistry enthusiasts around the world go head to head to construct trees with the theme of ‘the periodic table’ in preparation for the International Year of the Periodic Table in 2019. Some adorned real trees with glassware-inspired ornaments, while others built festive retort stand constructions and jazzed them up with flasks of colourful solutions. Entries came from far and wide, including schools and universities in Australia, Canada, the USA and Ireland as well as the UK.

The competition gives students and teachers a great opportunity to combine chemistry and creativity, and connects chemists throughout the world. It is held on Twitter, where anyone can enter by tweeting pictures to O’Donoghue using the hashtag #chemistree.

Well done to everyone at Science Club who helped to make the winning chemistree.