South African universities do battle for intervarsity pub quiz title
The RSC South Africa local section organised a pub quiz – pitting universities against each other for the title.
By John Woodland
Early one evening in August, as another cold front was set to batter the Cape of Storms, a cluster of chemical scientists descended on the welcoming warmth of the Baxter Theatre Centre in Rondebosch for the third instalment of the Western Cape Intervarsity Chemistry Pub Quiz.
This event, which was first held in 2016 and again in 2019, saw teams from the University of Cape Town (UCT), Stellenbosch University (SU), the University of the Western Cape (UWC) and the Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT) battle it out for the title of pub quiz champions.
Eight rounds of questions, ranging from politics to the periodic table, were hosted in inimitable style by UCT’s Associate Professor David Gammon. Each successive round had another minute of time knocked off the clock, slowly turning up the average kinetic energy in the room.
Questions ranged from the mundane – “How large is the world’s population?” (the figure is roughly 7.8 billion) – to the esoteric – “Which female singer’s name is an anagram of ‘Presbyterians’?” (Britney Spears) – to the droll – “Why did the bear dissolve in water?” (It was a polar bear!).
Participants were not afraid to reveal their creative streaks, with team names ranging from The Free Radicals (a hybrid CPUT/UWC team replete with giant balloons and bottles of wine ingeniously disguised as “antioxidants”), MOFs-on-the-Move and The Atoms Family. The best-dressed award went to UCT's Naughty Squirrels, whose meticulous make-up represented those cheeky critters.
Midway through the evening, delicious burgers were provided courtesy of the Baxter Restaurant, lowering the activation energy for inter-team fraternisations.
Once the final scores had been tallied, SU’s Persistent Radicals were crowned the winners with each team member taking home a bottle of the Cape’s finest wine. The Bug Busters, a group representing UCT’s Holistic Drug Discovery and Development (H3D) Centre, came a close second, while the final podium position went to SU’s Disappearing Polymorphs.
A big thank-you to the organising 'dream team', comprising A/Prof David Gammon, Dr Wilson Mogodi and postgraduate students Larnelle Garnie and Natalia Shakela, for all their efforts behind the scenes. The local sections of the Royal Society of Chemistry and the South African Chemical Institute also warrant our appreciation for generously covering the cost of the event – a much-needed in-person celebration after the physical and psychological distancing imposed by the past two years.
