ValpoLife recently visited the Thomas Jefferson Science Olympiad team, as they prepare for the National Competition. The students practice at least 5 days a week, even coming in on the weekend, all to keep their minds active and better their skills in their events.
Several of the students were working in the computer lab, upon arriving to the school. Alex Kessler, a second year veteran of Science Olympiad and freshmen at Valparaiso High School, was practicing for the event “Compute This.” This event is an inquiry event, where students have to surf the web, finding answers to questions that are given to them, such as “What states experienced outages during 2010?” All of the answers must come from NASA’s website.
Jacob Mills and Ankur Dhoot were also in the lab, studying optics, learning all they could about light waves.
Moving on to the work room where many of the team’s projects are tested, Rainer Neis, a second year member, and Adam Sandberg, a first year member, were testing Junkyard Challenge. This event requires students to build a machine whose purpose is to set off 4 mousetraps in a designated order: north, south, west, and east. The machine has to be safe, with nothing flammable, acidic, or harmful in a projectile sense. The students run many tests without the traps, to measure times. The goal is to get the machine to set off the traps in as close to a minute as possible, without going over.
In Coach Bender’s classroom, the rest of the team was working on their individual events. Anthony Nelson was quizzing himself on bird calls This event requires a lot of work, first constructing a binder of information on different birds, including their anatomy. The students then quiz themselves on recognizing their calls and images. In competition, the style of the event is unknown until the students get there. It could be stations, where the students move from bird to bird, answering questions. Or it could be a power point presentation, in which they answer questions on general bird information or are given a bird call and have to answer questions about the bird. Anthony recommends that students need to “be ready for a whole lot,” that this event is a lot of work.
Over on the other side of the room, Samantha Yaros and Josh Abatie were working on “Write It, Do It,” an event which calls for one student to write directions on how to create an object for the other student to build, using those directions. The objects are already built, usually out of Tinker Toys, Legos, or Lincoln Logs, so the first student needs to be able to comprehend how to build the object as well. “We need to have the same mindset,” said Samantha, while discussing the difficulty of communication in this event.
“Crimebusters” practice was occurring on the adjacent tables. Liz Schlichting and Lexi Bluhm were working on solving a crime by identifying 12 mystery powders. These powders are linked to a case and are usually common substances such as Alka-Seltzer, baking powder, gelatin, and baking soda. The students use HCL, water, and iodine to test the powders and distinguish their identities.
Back in the work room, Ethan Biggs showed off the machine for “Trajectory.” This event uses a catapult to shoot racquetballs a certain distance. During competition, the students are given two targets to shoot at, with distances and heights unknown until they are ready to start the event. They consult a guide which helps them distinguish what settings they need for the catapult. Ethan, who won this event at State and has been a part of Science Olympiad for 2 years, has achieved a distance of 8 meters with the catapult.
The National Competition will be held on May 21.