On March 5, 2016, Sanford Upper School STEM enthusiasts participated in the Delaware State Science Olympiad competition, which was held at Delaware State University in Dover.
Sanford’s two teams competed against more than 50 other teams from across the state. Students who placed in the top 10 for their events received medals. Six Sanford students earned medals this year:
Philip Charles - 6th for Game On, 8th for Astronomy Evan Carswell - 6th for Game On, 8th for Astronomy Laura Davies - 6th for Chem Lab Garrett Jester - 8th for Write It, Do It Kimmie Riordan - 6th for Chem Lab Ana Sarmousakis - 8th for Write It, Do It
The Science Olympiad events vary widely in terms of skill sets and knowledge. Some require students to design, build, and test an apparatus; while in others, students conduct research and become knowledgeable about a subject in order to pass a written test. For the Astronomy event, Philip and Evan demonstrated an understanding of the basic concepts of math and physics relating to stellar evolution and star and planet formation, and for Game On, they showed their ability to design and build an original computer game incorporating the theme provided to them by the supervisor using the program Scratch.
In the Chem Lab event, Laura and Kimmie showed chemistry laboratory skills related to kinetics, chemical reactions and stoichiometry. Finally, for the technical writing exercise Write It/Do It, Garrett and Ana succeeded in composing a description of a contraption and other students will attempt to recreate it using only the written description.
Congratulations to the 2016 Science Olympiad team!