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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
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.
My college co-sponsors these events in Kansas City each year, and I can say they are a blast. Last year I ran the bottle rocket program, which uses air pressure to shoot soda bottle rockets into the air. It was so cold that rockets were freezing to the launcher. We had to pry them off, blasting ourselves with water and making us that much colder. Some rockets were very impressive, getting hangtimes of 15-17 seconds with only 60-70psi in them.
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).
This is a very fair point, and I have been both a judge and a participant, and parental help was a big part of it, and brought a lot of families together (especially with me and my dad, who don't relate very well outside of building and planning things).
I think you are also not taking into account that most of the events are information recall, and problem solving on paper: not just engineering events like the balsa tower and egg drop. Parents can do very little to help there, except help their kids learn. Few kids should need help with reading information.
The thing that really is bad, however, is when the *teachers* interfere too much in the competition. As unfair as it is for parents to give too much help, it is even more unfair with the teachers, since my school had several PhD's teaching, as opposed to the public school system.
The real answer is that if the kid really wanted to, he could seek help from others if his parents/schoolteachers were not satisfactory.
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 participated in Physics Olympiad in 8th grade(which would be about 10 years ago now). You obviously knew all of the events ahead of time, but as the above poster said, most were done at the meet I suppose you could call it. And each team member knew which event he/she would be participating in.
There was a paper airplane toss, you had to build it at the meet, but you could spend as much time before hand coming up with what you thought was the perfect plane. The winner was the plane that flew the farthest. I think you only got one try at it too.
There was a contest to build a bridge with a specified number of popsicle sticks that had to meet certain height and width criteria and the winner was the bridge that held the most weight.
I do remember there being one event where you made an insulator. It had to be a specific size and had to hold a beaker of a specific size, otherwise it was up to you what to do with it. The winner was the one that lost the least heat in an hour or two. That one was built at home, since it would be hard to construct it so quickly.
Then there was a test and also a jeopardy game. The categories and suggested reading were given ahead of time, but not specific answers.
Anyways, these things are a lot of fun. I remember a catapult toss as one of the events and an egg drop. Those were both made beforehand as well. I think the teacher was responsible for insuring that the students actually did the work and not anyone else.
Oh, and in case anyone cares, my team brought home the gold here in NW Florida. Still have my little ribbon somewhere. Physics rules!
Many of the events require on-the-spot stuff. Those that don't, yes, its possible. Years ago I built a egg launcher with a few friends for a Sci Olympiad competition, and my father came up with the idea of a composite-core catapult arm(aluminum shower curtain rod, which is what we had been using, only with a wood core glued in. Tt worked, we stopped bending the arm...and yes, we were using that much force- we could launch an egg clear across a football field with no problem. We set up next to some folks with a rubber band and a teaspoon...they were slightly disappointed). Still, we did 95% of the construction and design entirely on our own as a team, and fully 50% of the equation was catching it(we luckily had a lacrosse player on our team!) Not to mention, we learned something about composite materials.
Furthermore, it's a team effort- most of the people I knew on the team would have been rather put off if someone's parents contributed too much, probably to the point of mentioning it to the advisor.
Oh, the other project I was involved in was a rube goldberg machine. I was told, by my two other teammates, that my one part of the machine was virtually the only thing that worked, and it worked VERY well. It was a wad of steel wool hooked up to a switch and battery, to ignite or cut something. The fire apparently spread a tad(numerous components involved wood, plastic, paper, etc).
Please help metamoderate.