Competitive teams from 53 middle schools and 27 high schools from
Kent and Ottawa counties will converge on Grand Valley State
University's Allendale campus for the Region 12 Science Olympiad
Tournament on Saturday, March 19, from 8:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. Events
begin in the Grand Valley Field House and expand through the day to
other campus halls, including Padnos, Henry, Loutit and Cook-DeWitt.
Events are designed to challenge students' science and technology
knowledge as well as processing and application skills. The public is
invited to attend and watch problem-solving events, such as:
Naked Egg, where students build an on-site catcher to protect their
raw egg while being dropped from increasingly greater heights, until
it breaks.
The goal of the Disease Detectives event is to have students
understand connections between things they may encounter in daily life
and various health problems that affect communities, risks for
disease/injury, and opportunities for prevention.
In Pentathlon five physical skills are interspersed with science
questions in an obstacle course that will be run in a relay race style
where each student passes the balloon to the next student.
Experimental Design students are given a set of unknown objects to
design, conduct, analyze and write-up an experiment.
Wright Stuff students will design and build a propeller propelled
aerodynamic device and compete for greatest time aloft.
Storm the Castle teams will design, construct, calibrate and operate
a device capable of launching a projectile as far and as accurately as
possible using only the energy of a falling counterweight.
Additional free events are planned throughout the day including a
special physics demonstration, presented by the GVSU Physics Club,
in the Fieldhouse from noon to 3 p.m. There will also be a showing
from1-3:15 p.m. of three episodes of Star Trek in the Big Screen
Theater located in 107 Manitou Hall.
Call 331-2267 for more event information. The official web site of
Science Olympiad is www.soinc.org.
