An Experience

Ngô Minh Thư

At the National Science Olympiad Competition in Illinois, I had a great new
experience. Middle school kids and high school kids compete in science events,
they each have their own divisions. Everyone works together in teams, and the
team with the best score wins the competition. For bigger states there can be
more than one team who gets to go to the nationals. One of the teams from my
school, St. Joseph’s Catholic School, did very well in the state competition.
We had about six teams, and got to go to the national competition as one team.
Only one team in Idaho got to go. The 21 students with the best scores were
chosen for the national team. I was chosen to go.

There were 27 events for the middle school division. Only teams that had each
person doing three events and filling in all the events could win the state
competition. There were three types of events: lab, research, and build-it.
I picked one event from each category. The events I chose for the state competition
were human systems, experimental design, and building an instrument and learning
the science of sound. For nationals, I decided to do fossils instead of human
systems. There were many different kinds of events you had to choose from, and
each year some events may be dropped are new ones added.

The national competition was held in the University of Illinois with 60 teams
competing in the middle school division. The campus was huge and we kept getting
lost. We walked around so much by the end of the competition day that we just
collapsed in bed when we got to our rooms. I had so much fun in Illinois and
met people from all around the country. Each team had their own team shirts
so we could feel like a team, and some teams even had their own songs!

There was an opening ceremony where adults who have achieved a lot of awards,
and were working to discover many things spoke to us. There was a man who discovered
how to make CD players, another man who was working to prove a dark matter was
in the solar system, and a man who had worked with a group to discover a drug
for people who have cancer – so that instead of dying from cancer, more people
were living with it. During the opening ceremony, all the state teams were announced.
After the ceremony, all the kids traded items from their states. From Idaho,
we brought potato toys, Idaho postcards, shirts, pins and just about anything
else that had anything to do with Idaho or potatoes.

The Science Olympiad was a great learning experience to me. In the Science
Olympiad, everyone in the team has to do well for the team’s benefit. If you
don’t do well, it brings the everybody down. Everyone has to cooperate and use
teamwork to pass the state competition. Our Saint Joseph’s Idaho team learned
to use cooperation and teamwork to become state champions and get to the Nationals.
We built and studied for our Science Olympiad events. Both the State and the
National competition were very fun. Parents of the students supported the team
by coaching and volunteering. Maybe we didn’t win more than two medals, but
it was our first time at national, and now we know what it’s like. Everyone
learned a lot and we are going to participate next year and put our best effort
in it again.

National Science Olympiad

May 21, 2005

1) Experimental Design
– 8-9 at 314 Illini Union
Materials

1 Goggles
2 Pencils and pen
3 Watch
4 Non-programmable calculator
5 Ruler

2) Sounds of Music-at
12:40-1:40 Smith Music Hall
Auditorium
Materials

6 Music score
7 Instrument

3) Fossils- 1:50-2:50
at 251 Natural History Building
Materials

1 Binder
2 Magnifying Glass