“I gained a better appreciation for sewing and learned that a lot of things sound like ‘mole,’” junior Christopher Vu said.

Though it may sound like it, Vu was not commenting on his experience at fashion designer boot camp. Rather, he was referring to the invaluable skills he obtained and the adversity he overcame to reach the final round in chemistry teacher Kathy Nakamatsu’s annual mole contest.

In the optional assignment, chemistry teacher Kathy Nakamatsu asked students in her Honors and AP classes to design a mole (usually a unit of measurement in chemistry but in this case a stuffed animal) with an appealing incentive: five extra credit lab points. While some students sewed a plain mole to simply obtain the extra credit points, most students dressed their moles up for the actual contest based on a mole pun.

After a mole army from each of Nakamatsu’s five periods was accounted for, some teachers voted on whose moles they deemed the best. The top vote-getting mole in each period secured a bid in the finals and also earned its owner a $5 gift card to Starbucks.

The five moles that weaseled into the final round were sophomore Stanley Yip’s “Mole in One,” sophomore Anjali Pradhan’s “Mount Rush-mole,” Vu’s “Mole Train,” junior David Eng’s “Molar Mass,” and juniors Antara and Meghana Rao’s “Inter-mole-cular Forces.”

To determine the grand-prize winner of a $25 gift card to Target, Nakamatsu held a blind vote in each of her five periods. By the end of the day, only mole reigned supreme: Eng’s “Molar Mass.”

Interestingly enough, Eng’s mole shares the name of last year’s winner, sewn by senior Arthur Chang. But unlike Chang, who accessorized his fluffy white mole to represent the pope holding a “molar mass,” Eng’s mole exploited the intrinsic pun in the chemical unit of measurement, grams (mass) over mole (of a substance). He represented “molar mass” by placing grandmother (grams) over his mole.

“It’s just a fun contest. It’s always interesting to see what my students come up with,” Nakamatsu said.