Academic Athletes Students Flex Their Brains At Regional Science Olympiad

The object of Scramble, one of the events at Saturday’s regional Science Olympiad at Whitworth College, was not to.

The junior high and high school students had to design a small wheeled vehicle that would quickly transport an egg, unscathed, a distance of up to 12 meters.

Contest organizers made it so the task wasn’t easy.

The students could use only a two kilogram weight to generate the force necessary to propel the car. Most accomplished that by building a simple pulley system where the falling weight sent the car rolling downrange, preferably at high speed.

Time counted in this competition - the less of it the better.

The vehicle also had to be constructed precisely enough not to stray off the two-meter-wide track.

Go off course, get disqualified.

But the most important thing was neither speed nor steering. It was stopping.

Because at the end of the track, a plywood board waited. On the front of the car, an egg was taped.

The object was to get the egg as close to that board as possible, as quickly as possible.

If not, it’s omelet city - and disqualification.

“You’ve got to stop it quick, like on a dime,” said Andy Jones, a 16-year-old sophomore at Ferris High School, who used a special axle on his car that would stop turning at a time Jones designated.

The trick was calibrating when that time would be.

“It doesn’t pay to overshoot in this competition,” said Lee Nilson, who was supervising the event.

One more thing, the whole apparatus - car and propulsion system - could be no larger than a one-meter cube.

“It’s a challenge,” Nilson said.

Scramble was just one of several events that tested the knowledge, abilities and ingenuity of the more than 200 students from around Eastern Washington who took part in the Science Olympiad.

The kids also competed to determine whose balsa wood tower could support the most weight, whose air cannon was the most accurate and who knew the most about amphibians and reptiles, among other things.

“The Science Olympiad is an engaging, hands-on way to encourage these students to pursue studies and careers in science,” said Mark Biermann, a Whitworth physics professor who co-directed the event.

But it was also a competition, and the players in this Olympiad were just as intense and serious as those in the competitions where they run the 100-meter dash and throw the discus.

Winners at Saturday’s regional meet qualified for a berth in the state competition, which will be held at Eastern Washington University on April 1.

One teenage boy slammed his fist down on a table after he missed the target in the trajectory competition, where students try to shoot a tennis ball into a box by forcing compressed air through a tube.

Precision was everything in that contest, and his cannon wasn’t very precise. Luckily, he wasn’t shooting eggs.