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

Regional and state olympiads take place around the country. They always need volunteers to judge and help out. Check out the national Olympiad site and see what you can do to help. Their 20th anniversary national event is this May about 90 miles west of Harrisburg, PA."

Comments

An Innocent Question

[GuyMannDude]

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

Science Olympiad is a blast to judge too!

[jkinney3]

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!