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                         March 19, 2004

West Point hosts annual Science Olympiad

Story and photos by Spc. Benjamin Gruver 
Staff Writer

Zhifan Song and Viktor Gamarnik of Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan get their plane ready to fly in the "Wright Stuff" competition at the New York State Science Olympiad Saturday. The event, hosted by West Point's Department of Chemistry and Life Sciences, had approximately 800 students from 45 different schools competing to go on to the National Competition in Huntingdon, Pa., May 21-22.

The day after cadets loaded into cars to escape West Point for a week of spring break, hundreds of high school students arrived in buses for the annual New York State Science Olympiad Tournament Finals.

The March 13 event, hosted by the U.S. Military Academy’s Department of Chemistry and Life Sciences, featured more than 800 students from 45 different schools competing in events such as “Robot Ramble,” “Storm the Castle” and “Geocaching.” The events covered a wide variety of science subjects including biology, physics and chemistry.

Each competing team had won regionally and was trying to become one of the two teams to go to the national competition in May at Juniata College in Hutingdon, Pa.

“We get two teams due to our enrollment and registration,” said Harold Miller, Science Olympiad state supervisor. “We have the most high schools registered in any state and at the midlevel we are the second in any state, so we get two teams.”

There are 285 high schools in 11 regions across the state and 10 midlevel regions that qualify teams to come to the state finals, explained Miller.

“If you take a student who wins astronomy, on this particular day, he’s the best student in New York State no matter what his team does here,” Miller said who has run the event since 1988. “Even the kid who gets 44th place here is 44th out of 285 schools. That is good. Unfortunately they don’t look at it that way.”

Each team can have up to 15 students with no more than seven seniors on it, Miller explained. There are 25 events the team must cover throughout the day and many of the students will take part in two or more events.

“Some kids do only one event,” Miller said. “Sometimes they don’t use all 15 students.”

According to Miller, it’s the team with the lowest score that wins. First place gets one point, he explained, second place gets two points and so on. The best thing about the event, Miller added, is it creates a sense of teamwork.

“One of the things I like about Science Olympiad is what it does for those students used to being loners,” he said. “They learn that they can come in here being the best at building bridges, but it doesn’t mean anything if the team doesn’t do well, too.

“So they have to start worrying about the other team members and give whatever help they can to the team,” Miller added. “That results in a sense of working together, which is good.”

Eileen M. Kowalski, an assistant professor in the department of chemistry and officer-in-charge, said the various competitions are interesting for participants and viewers alike.

“They have an event called “Sound of Music” and there is three phases to that competition,” she explained. “The students have to build their own instrument, they have to be able to play some tune on it and then they have to be able to explain the physics of sound and why the instrument makes the sounds that it does.”

Kowalski said she never entered science fairs growing up, but thought it seemed an interesting thing to be a part of when she came here three years ago.

“What I liked best about it was that you get to see about 800 high school kids excited about doing science,” Kowalski said.

“I think it is amazing,” said Alice Kasten, a member of the Science Olympiad board of directors. “This is an event where they apply the stuff they’ve learned in class.

“One of the real side benefits is that it is a real team building event,” she continued. “They learn to work with one another, they learn to respect one another and they learn to respect each others talents.”