About 275 students from 13 schools across Berks County competed in 23 science events at the 31st annual Berks County Science Olympiad at Kutztown University Jan. 9.
“This is an invitational event in the sense that it gives the students an opportunity to develop their skills and no one is eliminated as a result of this competition,” said Dr. Dan Blanchard, associate professor of physical sciences and event facilitator. “It gives students a deadline to prepare stuff then in March will be the regional and that is the first round of elimination.”
According to the Science Olympiad website at http://soinc.org/about, “Science Olympiad competitions are like academic track meets, consisting of a series of 23 team events in each division (Division B is middle school; Division C is high school). Each year, a portion of the events are rotated to reflect the ever-changing nature of genetics, earth science, chemistry, anatomy, physics, geology, mechanical engineering and technology. By combining events from all disciplines, Science Olympiad encourages a wide cross-section of students to get involved. Emphasis is placed on active, hands-on group participation… Teamwork is a required skill in most scientific careers today, and Science Olympiad encourages group learning by designing events that forge alliances.”
Olympiad competitions are conducted at four levels – local, regional, state, and national. The local competition is designed to prepare students for regional competition.
The schools that participated in the competition were Boyertown, Exeter, Fleetwood, Governor Mifflin, Hamburg, Kutztown, Reading, Schuylkill Valley, Sun Valley, Twin Valley, Wyomissing and West Chester Bayard Rustin.
Schools at the junior high and senior high levels organize this event. Each school sends a team of up to 15 students with the high school teachers serving as the coaches, judges, and coordinators.
“You have 15 to 20 students competing. Any two are competing in only one or two of the events so no two students get to see all 23 of the events,” said Bill Riedel, event coordinator and former chemistry teacher for the Kutztown School District. “Two kids will specialize in only two or three events.”
New events this year included Fossils, Protein Modeling, Green Generation, and It’s About Time. Some events, although newly listed, may have been offered at one time and then removed.
Write It Do ItFleetwood senior Kali Galeassi waited out in the hall while her partner, Rachel Keirstead, also a senior, went in a room to look at something and write down directions on how to build something. It was then up to Galessi to go in and build the project in the Write It Do It event.
“I know that we’re going to be building something, but my partner told me that a lot of times the counties, the materials that they use, are confusing so I’m a little nervous about what’s going to go on in there,” said Galeassi, Afterwards, she felt they did well. “We built this structure with these little connect pieces with the rods in; it looked like snowflakes. They had to support each other to make the structure.”
Experimental Design”Experimental Design is an event where every time they come in they are given a directive to do an experiment and they have to follow the general directions, but they get to make the experiment up and then they have to write a lab report,” said Chris Sikich, biology teacher at Sun Valley High School.
Boyertown seniors Bryan McKeowan, Taylor Miller and Conor Jones teamed up in Experimental Design to build different structures using different bases. They tested what worked best for bases using Legos, Lincoln logs and straws and then put the rest of the items on top of it to see how many structures they could build in a minute.
“We hypothesized that the Legos have the strongest base just because of their connectibility, if that’s a word,” said Miller. “It was very exciting. I mean the time constraint was a little difficult for us and we felt pressured, but it was also exciting having the experiment and the teamwork in it so I think we came together as a team and we made it work.”
Governor Mifflin School District ninth grader Marlin Thomas also liked the event. “It was pretty interesting having to create a test right there having the materials just to find something and figure it out. We had to create as many structures as we can within one minute. I think our best was nine,” she said.
Hamburg High School freshman Veronica Screspo and seniors Ashley Shoch, Kalysta Bonenfant and Bailey Bowman thought the time limit restrictions in Experimental Design was the most difficult thing to accomplish.
“The hardest part, I guess, is being creative with the materials that were given to us,” said Emma Cheskey, eleventh grade.
Cheskey’s partner, Talia Kowalski, tenth grade, added, “You just have to come up with something.”
FossilsFirst ones to finish the testing in Fossils, Hamburg seniors Hannah Hungerford and Daniel Fink both agree that trying to find the fossil in the amount of time given was probably the hardest part.
“We had to go around from different station to station and tell what fossil it was and era it was from and everything,” said Hungerford. “I think we did all right.”
BridgesKutztown sophomores Garrett Moyer and Dean Delp built a bridge designed to hold a specified weight.
“It went pretty well. It held about half of the weight it was designed to, but we’ll definitely look at improving it. It was light compared to some of the other bridges,” said Moyer.
“It was very light so that it kind of accounts for it’s breaking,” said Delp.
Wright StuffThis event challenged competitors to build model airplanes.
“There’s so many things just getting it to be consistent going the right flight pattern,” said Fleetwood senior Matt Oross.
Oross and his partner, Thayjas Patil, junior, took on the challenge since no one else did. It was something they had never done before.
ScramblerSchuykill Valley High School senior Matt Longlott and junior Matt Milangk entered an event known as the Scrambler. In this event, according to the Science Olympiad website, it is necessary to design, build and test a mechanical device which uses the energy from a falling mass to transport an egg along a track as quickly as possible and stop as close to the center of a terminal barrier without breaking the egg.
“Being able to get the car to go straight was tough and then once we did get it straight, being able to consistently get it to go the distance and stop,” said Milangk.
He said they were hoping to get it to go as close as possible without breaking the egg. He felt they did pretty good.
Kutztown senior Emma Adam said the hardest thing for this event was making sure that the weight landed in the right spot and then just the building of it in general.
Air Trajectory”I like to say it was a controlled failure,” said Boyertown senior Taylor Miller. “We learned a lot of things today, not to do it three days beforehand.”
“It was a colossal failure,” added Miller’s partner, A.J. Lewis, also a senior. “We couldn’t even drop the weights like we wanted to.”
Miller thinks that maybe additional PVC piping would help their project. Lewis added duct tape to their list.
“We’ll come again for the next competition and we’ll probably have something completely different because this didn’t work well,” said Miller.
Bungee DropTwin Valley High School physics and astronomy teacher, Cathy Snell, was also judge for the Bungee Drop.
“I always enjoy doing Science Olympiad. It’s getting to see them work together as a team and just the in between time adjusting their apparatus is really cool,” said Snell.
Snell said there were a couple of teams that got very close to zero level. She said it comes from lots and lots of practice using combinations of springs or anything elastic such as bungee cords, rubber bands, etc.
“This kind of event requires a lot of testing ahead of time,” said Snell. “You test out your bungee and you have an idea of what it’s going to do.”
Sun Valley sophomore Zoe Rogers and her partner, Erik Flickinger, talked about the challenges of the Bungee Drop.
“Maybe just calibrating it,” said Rogers.
“I think it’s the random height that they picked,” said Flickinger. “It was like 4.62 meters. I thought that was pretty random, but it was fun. I think the hardest was the calibrating the second time.”
Bayard Russtin seniors Collin Clark and Sam Cutler said the most challenging part was testing the drop and getting consistency.
“We used different types of springs and we found the best one that works and is consistent and doesn’t change over time,” said Cutler.
Mission ImpossibleAccording to information found on the Science Olympiad website, students are responsible for the design, construction testing, and documenting of a Rube Goldberg-like device that must complete a series of consecutive maneuvers as the final task. This unit is created initially before the event.
Kutztown sophomores Dean Delp and Garrett Moyer built a device to move golf balls through a series of manipulations that eventually resulted in a buzzer at the end.
“The most time consuming part was probably just figuring out how to get it all set up the way we want it to,” said Delp.
“The wiring went the best. We did that once and done and it worked,” said Moyer.
Dustin Hoffman, one of the judges for this event, had once been a participant with the Kutztown High School and is currently working on a Bachelor of Science program and possibly a masters program in mechanical engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
“I kind of miss the building events, I have to admit that,” said Hoffman. “I’m going to RPI now so I have to do a lot more engineering so it’s a lot more tighter tolerances, more precision, more perfection, but at the same time it’s kind of neat to see the throw-together job.”
Hoffman gives ideas on how the students can do better. He said events like this gives you an idea of what you want to do, see if you’re good at it, and get some experience while doing it.
“As a matter of fact, a lot of the electrical wiring and circuitry stuff that I learned definitely carried over and led into more complicated stuff,” said Hoffman.
ForensicsHamburg physics teacher Adam Forrer said the students had to look at a crime scene written out with evidence that recovered from the crime scene. There were four suspect sheets with fingerprints, details like what they were wearing and hair color, and where they were located to the crime. The students matched evidence such as hair and substances based on powders found at the crime scene to the suspects and then come up with a solution.
“This was all on paper for this event because it was long and we only had 40 minutes. At regionals they will have do to some hands-on through either flame tests or iodine tests or things like that,” said Forrer.
Science Olympiad concluded with a ribbon and certificate presentation. The question put to the students by Blanchard was not, “Did you have fun?”, but rather, “Were you challenged?”
Using a video about space exploration and the problems that can occur, Blanchard pointed out how the different Science Olympiad events can relate to the obstacles encountered during one of the space missions.
The purpose of the Science Olympiad is to improve the quality of science education, create a passion for learning science and provide recognition for outstanding achievement. These goals are accomplished through classroom activities, research, professional development workshops and the encouragement of intramural, district, regional, state, national and international tournaments.
For more, visit International Science Olympiad is http://www.soinc.org/.
