Science Olympiad -Event day

Finally, it was the day to showcase the Science and engineering projects aka "Build events". The elementary kids had been working hard on these and theory events for past few months. "A" was participating in one of the two teams from her school. The team was a good mix of 4-6th graders. All the kids were first timers and this surely was going to be a great experience for them, and it turned out to be.

Build events: The build events open for viewing were Battery Buggy, Mission Possible and Rubber band Catapult. The remaining build events - straw tower, write it build it were closed events and not open for public viewing.

Battery Buggy: In this challenge the goal was to design a battery operated automobile with braking mechanism, that could go in a straight line and can be configured to stop at a distance given during the time of competition. Here are some of the Battery buggies:



Mission Possible: This event challenged the kids to build a Rube-Goldberg type of machine to either raise a flag or roll a marble for 30 cm. A had participated in this event. Here are some of the Mission Possible creations:



Rubberband catapult: The challenge was to build a launcher for rubberband. This launcher had to be built configurable as the distance to launch the rubber band was given at the time of competition. Here are few catapults:



Pentathalon:
This activity is based on Marathon. The kids at one station answer science questions then do an activity and reach the next station where another set of kids repeat the same. These activities and the number of stations are announced on the event day. Luckily there was only one - event carrying marble in a spoon.


Theory events: These were Ecology, Road Scholar, Reach for the stars, Science Jeopardy, Disease Detective and Science Jeopardy.

Science Jeopardy:
This event was partially an open event. The initial elimination round was a closed one and top three teams were picked to play the science jeopardy with buzzers. This final round was open for all the parents to view.

At the end of the event our teams did well considering the fact they they were first timers. Hopefully it has boosted the confidence of the kids to perform better in the next Science Olympiad.