On Oct.24, the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry hosted the 5th annual celebration of Chem-O-Ween. All students were welcomed to register for this celebration and were even encouraged to wear their spookiest looks. 

The event started around 6:02 p.m. with a spectacle-driven opening that included Zach Boggs, senior academic laboratory manager in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, dressed up as the character Beetlejuice, lighting a balloon on fire.

The opening ceremony then turned into a joke-filled monologue about the past versions of Chem-O-Ween, highlighting how each year the event has gotten bigger and bolder with its experiments and activities. 

At 6:20 p.m., attendees were invited to participate in multiple activities set up by student and faculty organizers. Participants could either attend demonstrations, grab colorful refreshments in the hallway or enter the trivia contest to win a mole stuffed animal. 

Attendees also engaged in a scavenger hunt. At the beginning of the night, students were given sheets that had all four demonstrations represented with a specific symbol.

The goal of the scavenger hunt was to attend all the demonstrations and get a sticker from the student and faculty volunteers performing the demonstration. If an attendee has all four stickers on their sheet, they received a prize for finishing the hunt. 

At the halfway point, attendees were given the chance to compete in Chem-O-Ween’s annual costume contest. Participants in the contest lined up as one-by-one they marched down to the center of the room before three judges.

After much deliberation, the judges picked their top three favorites of the night, rewarding each with a coveted mole plushie. 

After the costume contest, students explored the other activities and demonstrations. Chem-O-Ween operates like a haunted house, with each lab room reflecting a different concept and theme tied to the experiment that will be conducted in that room.

For example, one room had student volunteers conducting freezing demonstrations where attendees could watch different items become ice right before their eyes. The concept for that particular room was a Frozen Wasteland, and the room was decorated in accordance with the theme. 

Another demonstration had fire as the centerpiece, so the lab room was decorated to look like a dragon’s lair. The demos presented involved lighting a variety of items on fire, including gummy bears, cotton balls, chemical solutions, acetone and, for the first time, handle wax. This ultimately resulted in multiple fiery explosions for attendees to enjoy.

According to Boggs, the fire room is one of the longest running rooms and has remained relatively the same throughout the years, with the biggest change in recent years being the addition of a theme to the room.

Grace Dorfi, a molecular biology major, and Cameron Kaleta, a biochemistry student, were both in charge of the fire room this year. 

“I think one of the things about our room and the ice room is it’s just something that we do to get people excited. … They’ll look at this, and go, ‘Wow, that’s really cool. This is like stuff that they do in movies and all that stuff.’ Maybe not exactly, but like this is science. This is fun, and people actually like it. They get excited,” Kaleta said. 

Taylor Leonard, a chemistry major, was one of the student volunteers working the ice room, which was another popular demonstration at the event.

Leonard, dressed as a polar bear, shared how her room played with the theatrical elements of Chem-O-Ween while balancing out the scientific precision needed to carry out her demonstration. 

“I feel like a lot of people don’t realize that we go into a lot of dialogue. It’s not so much like science and chemistry,” Leonard said. “Our room wasn’t just Frozen Wasteland. It was also like we were taking them on a journey, … and in that way I feel like it is almost like haunted house storytelling.” 

Chem-O-Ween 2025 also marked the first year attendees were able to participate in demonstrations, allowing people to create their own slime and understand the process of making elephant toothpaste, a scientific demonstration that creates a large foaming eruption resembling toothpaste for elephants.

Participants received guided help from the student volunteers facilitating the experiment, but the attendee ultimately was the individual conducting the demo in these circumstances. 

The night drew to a conclusion as attendees shuffled back to their seats to witness the final moments of Chem-O-Ween. After Boggs thanked the staff and students who made this event possible, it was revealed that there would be one last demonstration for participants to watch that would pay homage to past final demonstrations.

The demonstration involved a fireball-like flame erupting from a series of pumpkins and ended up sparking an overwhelmingly positive response from audience members, who cheered and clapped with excitement.

After the finale demonstration, the night concluded with another round of applause from attendees, who left Williams Hall experiencing the joys of science in real time.

Dorfi explained after the show that the goal of Chem-O-Ween is to show off the more exciting aspects of science, and believes the 5th annual Chem-O-Ween accomplished that goal. 

“I can tell definitely by the oohing and awing, and just the audience interactions, even though they weren’t directly involved with what we were doing. Just them cheering us on, and letting us know that we were doing a good job, and that everything worked. Those were all really good things,” Dorfi said.

Ava Dunn is a reporter. Contact her at [email protected].