The Chemistry Final Heist

Mr. Harrison had a mustache bristling with scholarly power and a stern examination gaze that had once compelled a rookie student to plead guilty to something they had not done. It was 9:00 AM on a Thursday, and the honors chemistry final was taking place. Mr. Harrison sat at his desk like a gargoyle, confident that he had eradicated any possibility of cheating with his seizure of thirty-two smartphones, banishment of smartwatches, and removal of backpacks from the students, leaving them to languish outside in the hall. But in his own mind, Mr. Harrison was supervising an ordinary exam.

Three desks over, Chloe was implementing the "Cosmetic Directive." Chloe gazed vacantly at her paper, appearing completely innocent until she required the molecular weight of a certain isotope. It was then that she simply inspected her left hand, as if she were some glamorous villainess. The previous night, Chloe had taken the tiny 0.1mm gel pen and written out the whole periodic table in the ornate and geometric line art design on her expensive acrylic nails. To Harrison, she appeared no more than your typical teenage girl indulging in vanity. To Chloe, however, her left hand contained an entire database.

On the other side of the aisle, Marcus was applying a totally different field within physics: acoustics. He had devoted the past three days into training a small team of associates how to identify the particular sounds that each of the everyday classroom annoyances made. A wet cough indicated choice A. A long drawn-out sigh meant choice B. And the squeaking sound a sneaker made against the linoleum floor was choice C. When an intimidating question regarding covalent bonding nearly broke the back row, Marcus delicately clicked the end of his plastic ruler against his desk at an even tempo. To Harrison, it was nothing more than the irritating trait of a bored teenager in need of more fiber. To the network, however, it was a transmission of the correct answers to questions fifteen to twenty.

Leo’s operation, however, represented the height of technological disobedience, as he occupied the very center position of the classroom. Leo circumvented the ban on phones by creating an altered version of a calculator that came into existence in the year 1998 – a simple scientific calculator that did not allow for programming. He carved out space in its shell and installed a mini-smart screen that could be controlled through the original buttons. As Harrison walked back and forth at the front of the class, assured of his faith in technology such as a simple Texas Instruments calculator, Leo was busy flipping through the pages of the textbook in the form of a PDF on his mini-screen.

In any case, the absolute star of the show that morning had to be “the Hydration Protocol,” masterminded by the demure student known only as Maya. Sitting at the front of the classroom, right next to Harrison’s podium, Maya had a standard water bottle filled with just plain old generic spring water perched on her desk. What she had done before class was peel off the label, scan it into her computer, use photo-editing software to alter the contents of the label to include complex chemical equations of acid-base titration formulas, and then print out the label and reattach it to the water bottle. Where “Vitamin C” should have been listed, Maya had instructions for calculating molarity.

At around 10:30, the last bell sounded, and thirty kids turned in their test papers in a state of utter, theatrical exhaustion. Mr. Harrison gathered the papers, absolutely delighted with the foolproof integrity of his invulnerable test setup. He strode along the bare rows of desks, grabbing an errant eraser, entirely oblivious to the fact that he had been methodically outfoxed by a manicure, a shopping trip, an act of anachronism, and a carefully timed clearing of the throat. The students had not managed to memorize one line from their chemistry book, yet somehow learned engineering, coding, graphics, and telephony; demonstrating conclusively that there is nothing quite like the fear of failing that motivates human ingenuity.