Incredimole Day: A look into the planning of 2023 Mole Day celebration by the Chemistry 2 students

A recap of the 2023 Mole Day Celebration planned by the Chemistry
teachers and Chemistry 2 students

Teenagers dressed in mole costumes frantically run around shouting chemistry songs as they prepare for the grand celebration. Once the clock hits 6:02 a.m., fireballs of hydrogen shake the ground as dust from ceiling tiles falls on their heads.

Mole Day is celebrated at 6:02 on Oct. 23, when chemistry enthusiasts all around celebrate Avagadro’s number of particles in a mole of substance — 6.022 x 10^23. For East students, it means screaming songs, playing games and a combined hysteria from the mixture of waking up in the morning and raunchy chemistry jokes but going into Mole Day this year that spirit might not be there.

For over two decades, East’s Mole Day has been notorious for being a grand celebration, according to AP Chemistry 2 student, head Mole Day coordinator and junior Anna Holland.

The day consisted of an early morning feast of 300 molnuts, 228 IncredeMole-themed T-shirts and seven, Mole-themed games — a chemistry-themed Broadway production orchestrated by 14 AP Chemistry 2 students.

Preperation for the event starts six weeks before Mole Day when the Chemistry 2 students volunteer to be Mole Day Officers and are assigned a designated task. Because of the amount of time and planning it takes, it can be quite overwhelming.

“I’ve lost years of my life, and it’s crazy because it’s all over in barely an hour,” Anna said. “All this planning for it, I hope [Chemistry 1 students] enjoy every aspect of it.”

The officers need to be at East at 4:30 a.m. to complete the setup. They have to organize all of the activities, but this year the main concern is the enthusiasm of Chemistry 1 students.

“I know a lot of [Chemistry 1 students] weren’t that excited,” AP Chemistry and Junior Kelsey Stroud said. “They’re all depressed and sad. I wanted to see them get hype about [chemistry].”

Typically, both Chemistry teachers Steven Appier and Jerrod Bardwell teach their students the electromagnetic spectrum song every year before Mole Day, and typically the students sing the chorus of the song. This year, no one did. What is usually a choir of corniness was instead a garden of frozen chemistry students.

This was the greatest of worries to the Mole Day officers because they now had to find a way to instill their laugh-at-any-corny-chemistry-joke love of chemistry into the Chemistry 1 students.

They tried singing the songs with them: nothing. Giving presentations and candy: emotionless. They only began to sing after the whole chemistry department, including the Chemistry 2 students, yelled for all students to stand up and sing.

“I just want people to see that it can be fun,” Stroud said. “I feel like so many people, especially this year, are just making it awkward or acting like they don’t want to be there. It can be fun if you just let yourself go a little bit.”

The morning of Mole Day came and the cafeteria began to fill with Chemistry 1 students all wearing their red and yellow Incredmole T-shirts. The time came for the Mole salute, everyone stood, crossed their fingers and proudly wiggled them back and forth imitating a mole.

Maybe it was the guacaMole or maybe it was the shared delirious feeling that morning, but despite the worries from the Officers, the Chemistry 1 students proudly showed their spirit. They whacked Chemistry 2 kids in Whack-a-Mole, they tore chairs out from under each other in Molsical Chairs and they sang the Electromagnetic Spectrum song louder than anyone expected, Appier admitted.

“Chemistry isn’t just a department or a class, it’s a community,” AP Chemistry 2 and junior Espie Lemon said. “Just don’t be afraid to just get into it and celebrate.”