The fun of Olympiad.

This blog happens to be about Science Olympiad. As most of you know it’s is time to try out again. Now I don’t know if I’m actually going to make it, but this is to tell those of you who don’t know what Olympiad is all about.

Olympiad is pretty much a competition to test skills in different areas of Science. Such as Physics, the Metric System, Terminology, Geology, and much more. One of the events is “Simple Machines,” in this event you have to be able to put together simple machines find Actual Mechanical Advantage (AMA), Ideal Mechanical Advantage (IMA), and the Efficiency of the machine. All of this has to be done in a certain time period which makes you rush everything, therefore you have to split tasks with you partner to get the event done within the time period. Another event is “Metric Mastery”, in this event you have to be able to take any given object and be able to find it’s mass its surface area, its area, its volume, its density, etc. Well you might think that is easy, but here’s the catch, you have to be able to estimate all of these by just looking at it and feeling it before you use equipment to measure it. All of this is moving so fast that you and your partner are very easily, well, it is very easy to start fighting we will say. And yet another event is “Rocks and Minerals”, in this event you have to be able to identify a rock and tell the event coordinator anything that they want to know about that rock OR mineral. Sometimes you don’t always get to see the rock, you just get a detailed description of the rock OR mineral. And once again it is timed so you are constantly under stress. (Ask Madi Randquist about Amethyst and state!) But we cannot forget about “Wheeled Vehicle”, some of you will be saying what? Because it is not on the event sheet for this year, but for the past two years it has. This event is pretty much building a vehicle that can travel anywhere between five and ten meters. You might think that this is pretty easy but there is a catch, it has to be able to go straight within a millimeter and it has to be able to stop within a millimeter of the marked distance. This sometimes requires over 50 hours of calibration! The funnest part of Olympiad though is state, and if you are lucky enough Nationals you just get to have fun with all of your friends. Most of you have heard about the grueling test, you know the 2 hour ball of fun! It’s like part ACT, part Mensa, and there was another part Greenaway used to do about like estuaries. All of you will most likely score wonderfully on this test and it is normally tenths of percents that decide it. It does sound really intimidating but the best way to get through it is to just grin and bear it! Good luck to all on Wednesday!!