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Uncle Science Olympiad Needs You
Devlin-du-GEnie writes "I'll be judging an event for Florida's state Science Olympiad this coming weekend. It's kind of like a track meet of science and engineering. The participants are middle- and high-school students from all over Florida. (There are also two elementary school divisions.) I judged an event last year. It was incredibly rewarding to see kids fiercely competitive and engaged with problem solving. It's chock-full of geekly joy." Read on for some more details, including how you can get involved in the program.
The menu of events includes:
- Bottle Rocket
- Cell Biology
- Chemistry Lab
- Designer Genes
- Disease Detectives
- Dynamic Planet
- Experimental Design
- Robot Ramble
- Storm the Castle (catapaults!)
- Naked Egg Drop
I had to bribe the Olympiad Board with kickbacks and hookers just to agree to let us host this thing in Florida. Come one, come all, and enjoy!
The American Indians in Science and Engineering (http://aises.org/) have a similar event every year in Alburquerque. All ther regional winners attend. They're always glad to have volunteers for judging or other administrative help, and one need not be Indian to join.
For anyone considering helping out at any such event, don't forget an employer might be willing to pay your way in return for the good PR they'd get.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
Ok.. I browsed the links, and I've still yet to find a definition for the "naked egg drop".
Now this isnt something I want to be searching from work.. anyone heard of this?
Remember when you were a kid and there was stuff named [something] Olympics (no not Special Olympics)
Then they came and sued everyone to make them rename their organizations...
Ah, simpler times, back when I used to watch WWF.
I know this will be interpreted as a troll but I'm really interested in the answer. Is any attempt made at determining whether these kids get help from their parents? Is it done by the honor system? I would think that meddling from over-excited parents would be a significant factor in these science olympiads (kinda of the equivalent of steroids in the real olympics).
I remember back when I was in 5th grade the class had to build 'solar cookers' that we could use to cook our lunch for that day. Mine was passable but not great. Scott L., had a solar cooker you wouldn't believe. I was struggling to get enough heat in there to cook weenies and he was heating frozen pizzas, I kid you not. Not too surprisingly Scott's father was a high-school science teacher. Now it is theoretically possible that Scott was simply a smarter kid than I was (although it's worth noting that years later I would go on to get a Ph. D. in a scientific field from one of the most prestidous science institutes in the world and Scott did not) but I think we can pretty much agree that it's more likely the reason for Scott's superior performance was because he had considerable help from parents whereas I built my thing with my own two (small) hands.
That was over two decades ago. In that time parents, if anything, have gotten even more insistent that their kids perform better than their peers. Parents so often push their kids to excel just so they can brag about them at work or at the local garden club meeting or whatnot. So I ask you, how much of a problem is parental-assistance in these science olympiads in this day and age and how do you deal with it?
GMD
watch this
I loved that event, we had a butane torch in ours on year and debated the judge on what an "uncontrolled" flame was.
X(7): A program for managing terminal windows. See also screen(1).
There's like 3 guys in the bleachers. :-) I wonder how many of them are judges?
/* oops I accidentally made a comment, sorry */
Bah! You aren't doing mission possible? That's the best damn one there is. I did that for three years. It was the only event I actually prepared for, but I always got pulled into physics lab and experimental design and shit about a week before competition. The web searching one was fucking easy. I did it I think the first year they had it, and my partner and I pretty much copied and pasted shit and we won. Next year we did it expecting it to be the same, and it was some god damn biology thing that we actually had to think about! Anyway, science olympiad is really fun. Too bad I'm going to college now about a million miles from fucking anywhere(kirksville, mo) and I don't think there are any competitions around here.
Just wanted to throw my $0.02 on NSO organization. I think that with the school system the way it is, and the serious problems we seem to be having teaching basic science to people, this is one of the most worthy causes you can easily contribute to if you care about sciences and education. Plus, its *fun* as a judge to see what people come up with.
For me personally, it was something that a geek could excel in and interactively work with others and enjoy versus just sitting with the book. Plus, I love tinkering and doing practical engineering (one event I loved was called "Mystery Build" where you had a box full of random string, wood, paper, etc. and they had you build a cantilever or something when you got there).
35 medals over 4 years, 3 of them at the National Level (you *have* to see the Rube Goldberg devices they have up there). Some of the best fun I ever had with school (plus, you got to go on cool trips to Chicago and DC).
It was alot of fun. I remember my school went to the national competition in Indiana the first time we competed. It was a bit like a condensed fun-science course. I worked on the build-a-tower-as-light-as-possible part of it. The first time around we used dowel rods. You could stand on the thing, but it weighed so much we never stood a chance. Our second iteration of balsa wood kept falling apart because we waited until the last minute and the cyano-acrilate hadn't set yet. That was a really fun competition, although the robotics were more fun. JETS was good too. MA(theta) was never my thing.. damn, there were alot of those if your school was into it.
I have had the pleasure of judging different Science Olympiad events for a number of years now. I started with "Metric Mastery" for the middle school crowd. It involves some pretty difficult estimation skills.
After I got my own college physics lab to run, I ran the entire physics lab portion of the Science Olympiad for 3 years. I got to do both the regional and the state competitions. I was enthusiastic about the future after seeing what these kids could do!
I'm now at my third school and Science Olympiad is comming up. It's a great event to be involved with!
I loved that. I was the state champ in Road Rally (it was just reading topo & road maps and taking a test) and took second in bridge building (my 11 g bridge held 18 kilos or something close (I seem to recall 40 lbs)), and my partner and I hit the big city paper). Extra bonus were the HP scientific calcs that were donated to winners. That got me started on RPN, which might even be better. I'll have to see if I can help out now.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
Okay, that rambled a bit. All I can possibly conclude from my digression of a post is this: If you have the opportunity, participate somehow in the competition. Be a judge, participant, organizer, anything! It is damn well worth it (as one of my science teachers used to say)!
Save Sam and Max!
We got to visit Albany, a remarkably unexciting place to visit, even in the eyes of a 17 year old. The main challange for the first NY Olympics of the Mind was to build a stick balsa wood structure that could hold the most weight. There were a number of parameters, such as the total weight of the structure, type and amount of glue, and the minimum height off the ground (it also had to allow for a steel verticle bar to hold the dumbells). We were also not allowed to glue any two pieces over a greater length than the width of the sticks. We eventually came up with a great column design: we cut the sticks into perfect cubes and then glued thousands of cubes to sticks in cube-width intervals. The thing held every dumbell they had -- over 700 pounds! Such fun! I heartily recommend participating.
I've met more than a few scientists/engineers over the years who were in Science Olympiad. I was in it every year of middle and high school, although the best years were in middle school. The students at Peirce were blessed to have one of the best coaches around (Charlotte Nighton), and my middle school team went to nationals all four years I was eligible to be a team member. The whole experience was a blast, and it helped make an otherwise miserable middle school experience livable. There need to be more programs like this, they're a significant help to introduce kids to the fun part of science and engineering where you're doing real, hands on, work, instead of rote memorization and tests.
The kids are going to have a blast at Nationals in Juniata-its a nice little campus.
- Matt
Keep in mind that if you do want to participate in Science Olympiad, you will need a team of about 15 students (and 2 alternates, if you'd like) who are dedicated to their tasks. You can't win Science Olympiad if you're lazy, even if you're talented. It takes a lot of time, and considering that most regional competitions will be taking place within the next several weeks, you may find that there is not enough time to organize a team and prepare your events. Many events don't require thorough preparation, but several of them do.
Check with your regional coordinator to see if you will be allowed to take a partial team (last year my school took a team of 7 students and participated in only 14 of 23 events). It could still be fun to show up and only participate in some events, even if you just want to see if you're interested in next year's competition.
Other science-related high school competitions include the JETS TEAMS Engineering Competition and the National Science Bowl, which is more of a trivia competition. Unfortunately, it is too late to register for or participate in either of these events this year (most Science Bowl regional events are in February, with the Nationals in early May).
You see an event like this and wonder "why didn't my high school do this when I was there?" only to realize that the event didn't exist yet when you were in high school.
I decided that I didn't like SO after watching big high schools stomp little high schools into dust. This is a time when people's egos are very fragile, and there is simply too much importance put on those "bronze", "silver", and "gold" medals. With smaller schools, kids would have to take on multiple events to qualify, which is a real burden. Also, schools with helpful parents fare much better, especially for the construction events. Building a rube-goldberg machine is a bit easier if someone's dad has a garage full of junk or works for a surplus store.
The nationals were very sensationalistic, too. Not to mention far away, meaning many people were disappointed when their stuff got there broken.
Vote in November. You won't regret it.
I actually got disqualified from a Science Olympiad event when I was in eighth grade, and I'm still bitter.
The contest? Hot house. The goal, using the lightest mass fully enclosed "house" possible, try and insulate 100mL beaker of 100 water. Basically, the judges would fill a beaker for you, you'd place it in your device, and they'd take the temperature after 30 minutes.
The scoring was something like: deltaT*mass, and lowest score wins. deltaT measured in degrees Celsius and mass in grams. It didn't take me long to realize that the scoring wasn't geared toward the best insulator, but actually toward the lightest material.
So building a small rectangular house out of paper led to a design with a high loss of temperature, but a really low score. I thought it was brilliant. The judges thought it was cheating.
I still don't think I should have been disqualified. I got my first place my other event, but strangely, I don't remember what that was.
I'm doing that, you insensitive clod!
Actually, our team is doing states up here in New Jersey, having moved on from regionals by default.
Ehem. This requires some explaining.
Our high school had never before fielded a Science Olympiad team and we figured that our first time would be just a learning experience and didn't expect to do well. There is an event called "Sounds of Music" where you build two instruments and play Chester, and answer a few music related questions. We didn't have time to build them, so we didn't have any. After the first round of events, someone told our team leader that since only eight teams showed up, all eight would move on unless they couldn't compete in all events. So, my friend and I were pulled out of whatever event we were currently doing (and had backups), and we built two musical instruments for the event less than an hour away!
I was dumbfounded. Even so, using the manilla folders we had, we build a cross between a bugle and a kazoo. That is, until my buddy found that he could play a ruler pretty well. I added his rolled up folder tube to my tube and made a thing that sounded like crap but played from the required C3 (middle C) to C4. I had never played a buzzed instrument before, as I play Alto Sax. However, my friend has never played an instrument with more than one pitch, as he is a drummer.
So, we went into the auditorium, explained our musical knowledge, tuned our instruments, and played Chester. Turns out that he could get TWO WHOLE OCTAVES out of a ruler! I got maybe one and a half. We then had to figure out the frequency of a note based on that of A3 (440 Hz). My friend did it logaritmically and the judges were confused and told us that we were wrong. But we couldn't calculate it because we couldn't use a calculator and can't do logs in our heads. He went and got a calculator anyway, and sure enough, he got the correct frequency (well, on an even tempered scale). They were amazed and said we were the only ones who had gotten close to their value, calculated by musical intervals.
I also competed in astronomy, and we placed second, even though I know very little about astronomy. My other friend did fossil identification and placed fourth by bullshitting the entire way!
So, we are going to states and I'm trying to perfect (more or less) what I call a SSPACARTD, or Single String Plucked Air Compression And Rarification Tunable Device. Basically, a single stringed guitar.
Polymer Detective