The Indiana Science Olympiad brought local students, science, and fun to campus.
As snow coated the Goshen campus last Saturday, 180 students from local schools competed in the Science Olympiad regional tournament. Science Olympiad is modeled off the Olympics and teams of 15 people from seven middle schools and five high schools participated in 23 hands-on science events.
Amidst the snow flurries on Saturday, a group of students shot off bottle rockets on the lawn by the Yoder dorms. This event required competing teams to build 2 bottle rockets aimed to stay afloat for the longest period of time.
In the Science building, teams created and completed an original experiment with a set of unknown objects. In the Union gym, students flew homemade helicopters and in the music center, students performed on homemade wind and percussion instruments.
About 70 Goshen College students volunteered to help run the events. Sarah Toews, a freshman and last year’s Science Olympiad scholarship winner, was one of these volunteers. She led the Ecology event.
“Even if people aren't fully interested in science, helping out with the Science Olympiad event at Goshen is a lot of fun,” Toews said. “It’s cool to see how younger generations are keeping interest in science and finding better ways of working problems out.”
In high school, Toews enjoyed Science Olympiad as a way to make new friends and be supported in something she was interested in. She feels Science Olympiad will help her reach higher goals and appreciated assisting with it this year.
At the end of the day, Stanley Clark Middle School and Manchester Junior High School advanced to the state middle school level.
La Lumiere School advanced to the high school state level.
Northridge Middle School and Bethany Christian High School will both go to a wild card tournament on March 12 at Ivy Tech Community College in Lafayette for another chance to qualify for the state tournament.
The state competition is on April 2 at Purdue University Calumet. The national tournament will be held May 20 - 21 at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
