San Diego Science Olympiad - Steven's team

Carmel Valley Middle School's 5 Science Olympiad Teams

Steven's school takes their Science Olympiad very seriously. Last year they got first place in San Diego county. This year they sent five teams to the event.

Steven participated in three events, Amphibians and Reptiles, Road Scholar (the event that Doug and I coached), and his building event was called Trajectory.

Example of a Trajectory event

The point of the Trajectory event is to build a device capable of launching a tennis ball that can accurately hit various targets at various heights. The distance to the targets and the heights are not known in advance of the competition, but the maximum distance was 8 meters.

Various Trajectory devices in impound

That device turned out to be quite the effort. Doug helped Steven and his partner, Young, to build the device they designed using power tools.

Steven's device is the one in the furthest back left corner

The device was a good design in many ways, but it was plagued with technical difficulties (mostly that it didn't shoot far enough) and they were adjusting the design right up until the day before the competition.

Their device was powered by bungee cords

This meant they didn't have an opportunity to gather all the required calibration data, so going into the competition it was kind of a guess as to how to set their device to hit the various targets.

En route to the launch area

Scoring is based on how close the tennis ball is to the targets. They hit the furthest target right on.

The other targets did not go as well as that one shot. If they'd had even one more day to prepare and gather all their required data, I think their device was good enough to win a medal, but things didn't work out that way.

Our Road Scholars with their awards

Three out of the four middle school teams we coached brought home medals in the Road Scholar map reading event. One of the teams (the boy on the far right) and his partner tied for first. Steven and Young got 15th and I think the girls got 5th.

Carmel Valley Middle School with their second place trophy

Steven got 9th place for the Amphibians and Reptiles test (they didn't have results for that event on competition day) and their school won the second place trophy overall.

The Science Olympiad was one of the more time-consuming things we've ever taken on with the boys (we started in early November with the middle school teams) and having the competition the day before Steven and I left for Memphis added to the general pre-trip anxiety we always seem to face.

Sometime during the day on Saturday it dawned on us that if our kids did well enough in their events to go on to the state competition, our jobs wouldn't be done.

As it turns out, Steven's school will be sending one of their five teams on to the state competition.

We might do this again next year, but we're going to need some time to rest first. I think we're getting too old for this.

- Kathleen

San Diego Science Olympiad - Sean's team

San Diego Union Tribune article about the Science Olympiad:
http://signonsandiego.com/news/northcounty/20080203-9999-1m3olymp.html

The Torrey Hills Elementary Science Olympiad Team

One of our projects for the last few months (since October) has been coaching and preparing our kids for the San Diego Science Olympiad, held this last February 2nd. Doug and I coached the Road Scholar event, a map reading and comprehension competition for both the elementary and the middle school.

Typically each student that participates enrolls in either 3 or 4 events along with a partner. At least one event must be a building event, the other events are tests.

This is what happens when the brakes fail

Sean's building event was called Scrambler. They had to build a wheeled vehicle with a launching system and brakes.

An example of a good Scrambler run

They taped an egg to the front of the vehicle and run it down a course with a plank at the end. The idea is to get the vehicle as close to the plank as possible without touching it and without breaking the egg.

Sean, Drew and Drew's dad strategizing

The scoring is dependent on how long the vehicle takes to make its run and how close to the plank it gets. The distance to the plank is not known in advance, the range they were given beforehand was 8-12 meters and for the competition the distance was 9 meters.

Sean and Drew getting set up

Sean and his partner Drew had a hard time taping the egg onto the front of the vehicle, they broke two eggs and if they'd broken a third, they would have been disqualified.

Working hard to finish the setup

Sean and Drew were the youngest participants in the event, most of the participants are 3 years older. They had one problem after another getting set up and there was a murmur going through the room as the parents of other participants made sounds of sympathy for their struggles.

An awesome run, the egg was 2 cm from the plank

They finally completed their run and after all that trouble it would have been good enough to earn them a medal, the car moved quickly and stopped less than an inch (2 cm) from the wall.

But they'd exceeeded the 10-minute time limit allowed for setup and to complete the first run so their score didn't count.

Sean and Drew showing off their Scrambler car

They were great sports about it. We were really proud of our 5th graders going head-to-head in an event for 6th-9th graders.

Torrey Hills and their 9th place trophy

The single team from their school, the only elementary school in the event, took 9th place out of the over 40 schools and over 70 teams who were there that day, nobody expected it.

I think by next year they're going to be a force to contend with. Now if we could just get them to grow a little...

- Kathleen