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Education United States Science

Uncle Science Olympiad Needs You 41

Posted by timothy from the uncle-with-the-chem-lab dept.
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."
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Uncle Science Olympiad Needs You More

Uncle Science Olympiad Needs You

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  • An Alternative (Score:4, Informative)

    by DynaSoar ( 714234 ) * on Wednesday March 03, 2004 @03:01PM (#8454338) Journal
    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.
  • Ok.. I browsed the links, and I've still yet to find a definition for the "naked egg drop".

    Now this isnt something I want to be searching from work.. anyone heard of this?

    • Re:Question... (Score:4, Informative)

      by Gestahl ( 64158 ) <gestahl @ g m ail.com> on Wednesday March 03, 2004 @03:14PM (#8454478)
      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 ;-).
      • Yeah when I was in high school our naked egg drop for SO was this fine clay powder that you could mix with water and make whatever consistency you wanted. we were able to drop from 4 meters onto a slab 1.2 cm thick and it wouldnt break...it was very very cool

    • The "naked egg drop" is a hAX0R competition where you try to take down machines with older operating systems using malformed network packets while wearing no clothes.

  • ah, olympics (Score:3, Interesting)

    by glassesmonkey ( 684291 ) on Wednesday March 03, 2004 @03:08PM (#8454415) Homepage Journal
    Remember when you were a kid and there was stuff named [something] Olympics (no not Special Olympics)
    Then they [olympic.org] came and sued everyone to make them rename their organizations...
    Ah, simpler times, back when I used to watch WWF.

  • An Innocent Question (Score:4, Insightful)

    by GuyMannDude ( 574364 ) on Wednesday March 03, 2004 @03:14PM (#8454479) Journal

    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 (Score:4, Informative)

      by sljgh ( 742290 ) on Wednesday March 03, 2004 @03:19PM (#8454534)
      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.
      • 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.

    • Re:An Innocent Question (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Gestahl ( 64158 )
      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

    • Re:An Innocent Question (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      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

      Damn straight! You really showed that cheating little punk Scott! And even better, now all of Slashdot knows it! Man, I'd hate to be that guy right now. You the man!
    • 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).

      The answer is that no, no attempt is usually made to determine if there was parental aid. Of course there is some parental help in some cases. However, as has been pointed out, having outside help usually only comes in handy
    • Is any attempt made at determining whether these kids get help from their parents? Is it done by the honor system?

      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 usin

    • I'm not so sure how it works in this instance, but back at high school when I was doing Maths and Chemistry Olympiad stuff, most of what we were working on was well beyond what any high school parent would have been able to follow, unless by chance they were maths/chemistry researchers at the local university and happened to be specialised in just the right areas! And even if a parent was in a position to know what was going on, there was very little actual homework -- almost all the work/study was done in
    • When I participated in Science Olympiad, no attempt was made to determine if we recieved help. Help from parents usually wasn't a problem, it was help from the teacher/coach themselves. In certain cases, help was fine, i.e. using power tools, etc. Plus, you have to consider the kids participating in Science Olympiad- I wouldn't want my parent or a teacher to build something... we were nerds, and enjoyed doing it ourself!

  • Mission Possible (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jon787 ( 512497 ) on Wednesday March 03, 2004 @03:17PM (#8454511) Homepage Journal
    I loved that event, we had a butane torch in ours on year and debated the judge on what an "uncontrolled" flame was.
  • There's like 3 guys in the bleachers. :-) I wonder how many of them are judges?
  • Bah! You aren't doing mission possible? That's the best damn one there is. I did that for three years. It was the only event I actually prepared for, but I always got pulled into physics lab and experimental design and shit about a week before competition. The web searching one was fucking easy. I did it I think the first year they had it, and my partner and I pretty much copied and pasted shit and we won. Next year we did it expecting it to be the same, and it was some god damn biology thing that we
    • There's plenty of competitions in Missouri. I would be shocked if there weren't any around Kirksville. I went to the state competition one year, and there were teams from every corner of the state there.

      And if you didn't like where Truman State was located, you should have gone to college in the "Middle of Everywhere" like I did, Rolla, MO!

  • Science Olympiad rocks! (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Gestahl ( 64158 )
    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 ti
    • "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)." .........where are you from? I'm from Webster NY and we had a simillar level of sucess...
  • 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 comp

  • Science Olympiad is a blast to judge too! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by jkinney3 ( 535278 ) on Wednesday March 03, 2004 @04:16PM (#8455290)
    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!
  • I loved that. I was the state champ in Road Rally (it was just reading topo & road maps and taking a test) and took second in bridge building (my 11 g bridge held 18 kilos or something close (I seem to recall 40 lbs)), and my partner and I hit the big city paper). Extra bonus were the HP scientific calcs that were donated to winners. That got me started on RPN, which might even be better. I'll have to see if I can help out now.
  • I remember being in the Science Olympiad (the shirt still fits). The only year I was in it (before going to a new school) was, so far, the only year my school made it to states. Pretty pathetic, eh? Despite being a painfully large school, we barely had any members. That year, every thing we made worked perfectly in regionals (pretty brilliant stuff, too. One of the members later went to a national robotics competition), but everything crashed and burned in states (more literal for some of the experiments th
  • We got to visit Albany, a remarkably unexciting place to visit, even in the eyes of a 17 year old. The main challange for the first NY Olympics of the Mind was to build a stick balsa wood structure that could hold the most weight. There were a number of parameters, such as the total weight of the structure, type and amount of glue, and the minimum height off the ground (it also had to allow for a steel verticle bar to hold the dumbells). We were also not allowed to glue any two pieces over a greater length

  • I've met more than a few scientists/engineers over the years who were in Science Olympiad. I was in it every year of middle and high school, although the best years were in middle school. The students at Peirce were blessed to have one of the best coaches around (Charlotte Nighton), and my middle school team went to nationals all four years I was eligible to be a team member. The whole experience was a blast, and it helped make an otherwise miserable middle school experience livable. There need to be mo

  • Organizing a team (Score:2, Informative)

    by Aerion ( 705544 )
    Keep in mind that if you do want to participate in Science Olympiad, you will need a team of about 15 students (and 2 alternates, if you'd like) who are dedicated to their tasks. You can't win Science Olympiad if you're lazy, even if you're talented. It takes a lot of time, and considering that most regional competitions will be taking place within the next several weeks, you may find that there is not enough time to organize a team and prepare your events. Many events don't require thorough preparation, bu

  • You see an event like this and wonder "why didn't my high school do this when I was there?" only to realize that the event didn't exist yet when you were in high school.

  • Science Olympiads is over-rated (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Mr. Piddle ( 567882 ) on Wednesday March 03, 2004 @08:30PM (#8458421)

    I decided that I didn't like SO after watching big high schools stomp little high schools into dust. This is a time when people's egos are very fragile, and there is simply too much importance put on those "bronze", "silver", and "gold" medals. With smaller schools, kids would have to take on multiple events to qualify, which is a real burden. Also, schools with helpful parents fare much better, especially for the construction events. Building a rube-goldberg machine is a bit easier if someone's dad has a garage full of junk or works for a surplus store.

    The nationals were very sensationalistic, too. Not to mention far away, meaning many people were disappointed when their stuff got there broken.
  • I actually got disqualified from a Science Olympiad event when I was in eighth grade, and I'm still bitter.

    The contest? Hot house. The goal, using the lightest mass fully enclosed "house" possible, try and insulate 100mL beaker of 100 water. Basically, the judges would fill a beaker for you, you'd place it in your device, and they'd take the temperature after 30 minutes.

    The scoring was something like: deltaT*mass, and lowest score wins. deltaT measured in degrees Celsius and mass in grams. It didn't
  • I'm doing that, you insensitive clod!

    Actually, our team is doing states up here in New Jersey, having moved on from regionals by default.

    Ehem. This requires some explaining.

    Our high school had never before fielded a Science Olympiad team and we figured that our first time would be just a learning experience and didn't expect to do well. There is an event called "Sounds of Music" where you build two instruments and play Chester, and answer a few music related questions. We didn't have time to build the

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