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 Alternative

[DynaSoar]

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.

Re:Question...

[Gestahl]

The naked egg drop is a twist on the old "drop the egg from a window inside a padded thing and see if it lasts" schtik. In this, the thing you build sits on the floor, and you drop the egg "naked" and see how high you can drop it from and it still not crack when it lands in your device. Our team won several years ago simply using *extremely* fine sand in a box ;-).

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

Re:An Innocent Question

[sljgh]

A lot of the events are not done ahead of time. There are programming events, math events and biology events as well as some that require the constrction of contraptions (egg drop etc.) that are started and completed at the competition by the students. Parents and coaches can do as much as they can to prep the kids, but only the judges know the questions, problems, or what supplies are available ahead of time.

Re:An Innocent Question

[Overdrive_SS]

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!

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!