Well as most of you know the State Science Olympiad competition was Saturday, and as most of you know, we did really well, and will be going to the National competition once again which will be held back in Washington D.C. this year. Now most of you will hear this on many of the other blogs, but yes, this is our 13th year in a row winning state. Out of 25 events we competed in 20, and out of those 20 events that we competed in 11 medals were gold, two were silver, four were bronze, we placed fifth in two events, and sixth in one. So, overall it was enough to ensure us another first place victory. With the events of yesterday, I still don’t have a whole bunch to really talk about.
So at the Olympiad competition yesterday I competed in Scrambler, which is a small vehicle that is designed to go as fast as possible between 8 and 12 meters, and carry an egg, now you may think, so what? So what if it has to carry and egg? Here is the catch, there is a table at the end of the track, and you can’t hit that wall. If you break your egg, you’re done. So how does this little car get all of its energy? At the start line you put a .75 meter cube that holds a 2 kg mass, (It just so happens that ours is solid lead with a large spring attached to the front) this 2 kg mass comes down and hits this car which makes it speed down the track. Just to give you a small idea about this mass though, it comes in at about 4 times more massive (4 times heavier) than this little car. If you were to take the spring off of the mass and drop it from the .75 meters, and it hit the bone on the front of your leg, it could seriously bruise it, or break it, so imagine how hard this car is getting nailed when you initiate the run. (I competed on this event with Derek Mickinley, and we won the gold medal)
One of my other events was Rocks and Minerals, on which I competed with Nicole Ly. On this event we just pretty much identified different rock and mineral specimens and told facts and stats on these different samples. Nicole and I manage to pull off a Gold Medal in this event.
And now my one other event was Simple Machines. I competed on this event with Brian Adair. I know that a lot of you can remember going through Greenaway’s class doing a lot with physics and Simple Machines. You may think, “Well I didn’t enjoy doing it, and it wasn’t that hard…” Let me tell you, Simple Machines with Science Olympiad is just, well, crazy, some of the simple machines they have are absolutely amazing, and horribly tough, sometimes they make you think the machine through without even seeing it, it just is a description on a piece of paper. Brian and I won gold in this event as well.
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