Three local teams from Lambertville, West Amwell and East Amwell schools applied their knowledge to 12 events to challenge their ingenuity and brain power.
By: Carl Reader
EAST AMWELL It wasn’t brawn but brains that had the crowds cheering recently in the East Amwell School gymnasium.
In a place usually reserved for the swift and strong, it was the smart and savvy who took home the prizes at the first-ever New Jersey State Elementary School Science Olympiad March 22 in East Amwell. Three local teams from Lambertville, West Amwell and East Amwell applied their minds and knowledge to 12 events that challenged their ingenuity and brain power.
"It is sort of an alternative to sports competition," said Sandy Buleza, co-director of the New Jersey State Science Olympiad.
Science Olympiads have been held in the state for 10 years, but the competition at East Amwell was the first of its kind. Never before had elementary-age children competed in a science Olympiad. There are 67 schools statewide that compete in these Olympiads, according to Mrs. Buleza, but until Lambertville, West Amwell and East Amwell took to the hardwood last week, no elementary school children had crossed that frontier.
With the United States continuing its habitual lag in the sciences behind other developed countries, Ms. Buleza said, the science Olympiads are a way to get children interested in the basics of how science works. The events are funded by many large companies, including DuPont, Microsoft, Honeywell and Boeing-McDonnell, that realize science education is important for their future well-being and growth and the nation’s. The competition in East Amwell produced the youngest competitors so far in their fields of endeavor.
"This is groundbreaking," Mrs. Buleza said. "This is the very first-ever elementary science Olympiad."
Of the 12 events in the competition, several might have had adults scratching their heads and looking through a biography of Albert Einstein for answers. Other events were just for fun, such as a can race that also teaches some needed lessons in aerodynamics.
There were also challenges entitled barge building, bottle music, bridge building, cool it, egg drop, gunk, mystery powders, paper rockets, pastamobile and rubber band. All were accompanied by hordes of youngsters cheering their teammates on as they did things like shoot paper rockets through the air or send rubber bands toward a target with a wooden catapult. Each event had a winner, a runner-up and a third-place winner.
In one of the more arcane events, Mystery Powders, it was the West Amwell team that took the top spot. The competitors in that event had to analyze three unknown powders through scientific methods and come up with what they were. West Amwell proved most adept at doing just that.
"We perform different tests using iodine, vinegar, flames and other things," explained Bob Piel, a sixth-grader from the winning team.
There are 47 states participating at the nationals in science Olympiads on middle school and high school levels. The older teams can move on to state competition and then national competition. This year, the nationals are in Delaware. Next year, they’ll be in Ohio.
For more information on science Olympiads, visit www.soinc.org.