Science Olympiad

On March 28 I had the privilege and honor of representing Fairfield Jr. High at the State Science Olympiad Competition. Science Olympiad is a national program that promotes kids to participate in math and science competitively. It is a blast, so much fun. You start around the end of the previous year, November and December area. You are on a team of about 15 people and there are about 25 events. You pick the events you want and hope that the coaches will pick you for that event. Well, since there are many events you usually get at least 1 of the events that you chose. For prep of the competition you study with your event partner. Some of the events are: anatomy, ecology, tower building, robots, amphibians and reptiles, bio-process lab, disease detectives, fossils, meteorology, road scholar, waves, environmental chemistry, physical science lab, trajectory, airplanes, experimental design.
On the day of the state competition you arrive at the school around 7 o’clock and get on a bus to Weber State University to compete. The events start around 8 o’clock and go to 3 o’clock. You usually don’t have every hour occupied by one of your events. The competition is so fun. In-between events you can explore the campus, or go and watch other events. Most of the events have a test, and the winner is the one that gets the highest score. The other events are building events that you build, some sort of scientifically thing, and test whatever it is and on the day of the competition, you show what you are made of. My events that I competed in were anatomy, crave the wave, and ecology. Anatomy: each year they pick two systems of the body and you have to learn everything that there is to know about those two systems. This year the systems were the cardiovascular and skeletal. This was the first time I was on this event and I got on the team late. I only had about a month to learn everything about them. I studied for about 3 or 4 hours each night for about a week me and my partner agreed for each of us to do half of the anatomy. I took cardiovascular and he took skeletal. We did well on anatomy and took bronze. Crave the Wave: in this we learn the properties and math about waves. We study earthquakes and how to locate the epicenter. We learn how to calculate the speed and wavelength of various types of waves. We took bronze. And in Ecology: this one we study different ecosystems and environment and how they react and work together. They made the test wrong and tested us on the wrong things. It was supposed to be grasslands and deserts but the test was on rivers. We still took bronze in that event. After the competition ends we had a pizza party and go crazy. We had a couple of hours to waste time before the award ceremony. We went to the D-event center and ran around the halls throwing a Frisbee. We sat down for the awards ceremony. It was tense. The pressure of our school taking state: for the could-be-fourteenth year. The air was cold, the coaches were tense, and the announcers were antsy. Our whole team was holding their breath every time they went through the 8 possible places. Our team did exceptionally well. We were in the top tree for every event except 1. I got three medals, I participated in three events: anatomy, ecology, and waves. Our team took gold and because we took first we get to go to Georgia and compete in the National Science Olympiad Competitions. I went last year to the one in D.C. and that was AWESOME. I can’t wait to go to Georgia.