Competition Chemistry

In high school, I participated in quite a few chemistry competitions and went to the International Chemistry Olympiad. In 2021 I was an [alumni] mentor for the USA team as well.

I originally created this website to equally and freely distribute all the interesting problems I had found/translated/wrote when I was in high school because I was frustrated by how learning materials were shared only among people within a few random high schools (and everyone else had no idea that all these random resources existed). For personal use, you are free to use these resources as you wish. Otherwise, please send me an email.

General Chemistry Resources

Advice for Post USNCO
- Here’s some advice if you are starting to feel like USNCO questions are becoming repetitive/too easy. It’s not applicable to beginners.
Join the USA Chemistry Olympiads Discord Server! The link is on their website.
- The server hosts many competitions every year including a Mock USNCO, Mock IChO, and several other original format competitions like CODS-CT and ACOT.
Edward Jin’s website is another excellent resource! Unfortunately it’s no longer online now that Edward has graudated. Maybe you could try the wayback machine.
How to Draw Organic Schemes
- An introduction to tools like MarvinSketch and Draw.io which you can use to draw your own organic puzzles (and get a degree in graphic design!)

Chemistry Problems

New Arrivals

Handouts
- Handouts I wrote while peer mentoring at camp in 2021
Original Problems
- Physical Chemistry
  - Halogen Cycle Reaction and solutions
    - I was very proud of this question

General

Original Problems
- Physical Chemistry
  - Dimerization Thermodynamics
    - the last subpart of this question is pretty interesting, and the other parts only existed because I needed to give people partial credit.
  - Sodium Particle in a Box
  - Explosive Electrochemistry
  - Stil time for Stille.pdf
- Organic Chemistry
- Inorganic & Analytical Chemistry + Miscellaneous
  - Copper Ammonia Equilibria
  - Mineral Analysis
  - Mysterious Acetates
  - Isothermal Titration Calorimetry
    - my favorite question!
  - Chromium Hydrolysis and solutions
    - a great MCB exercise
- Mock IChO - Written for a proctored competition on the CODS discord server in collaboration with Alec Zhu.
  - The Problems
  - The Solutions
  - Corrections issued during the exam (typos etc.)
Compilations
- (Mostly) Original Organic Problems - with help from Alec Zhu and Andrew Feng
- Challenge POTDs typeset in LaTeX
- Russian Olympiad Organic Compilation
  - This large document contains a compilation of organic chemistry questions which I translated from the Russia National Olympiads from about 2010-2019
Translations
- 2019 Russian Winter Camp Test
- 2020 Russian Winter Camp Test - translated by Ihor Kholomieiev (Igeru)!
- 2017-2019 Russian National Olympiad Tour 2 - with help from Alex Li, Alec Zhu, and Gideon Tzafriri
- Assortment of good quality translations
  - This folder contains many problems from various sources (Mendeleev, Russian Olympiad, CChO etc.) sorted by topic. I put in a lot of effort into these, so they should be well translated.
- CChOs - with help from YY Zhou
- Novosibirsk Organic Olympiad translations
  - Special thanks to Edward Jin for help collecting the original pdfs!

Mock Contests

I wrote and formatted several mock chemistry contests during my time participating in USNCO. Here are some of the more complete ones.

Mock USNCOs
- Mock USNCO - A mix of original and old problems(sourced from past IChOs etc.)
Mock Camp Tests: See ReadMe