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On the eve of Super Bowl XV in Las Vegas, a less intense and friendlier scene unfolds on Baltimore’s Homewood campus: the 5th Maryland Science Olympiad Invitational at Johns Hopkins University. was unfolded.
The event, held Saturday, featured hundreds of middle school students and their coaches from across Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C., as a practice game for regional and state tournaments to be held in March and April. A day full of science-related competitions, from designing a roller coaster and building a tower to testing your microbial knowledge, brings together students at Johns Hopkins University.
image credit: Larry Kanner of Johns Hopkins University
“We had never practiced ‘tower’ before,” said Criselda Bellarmino, a teacher and coach for the Hazelwood Elementary/Middle School team in northeast Baltimore. The tower in question was a pyramid-like structure made of lightweight wood that had to remain standing while supporting the weight of buckets of sand hanging below. Hazelwood did so, but the team ran out of time before filling the bucket. “But they did a great job,” Bellarmino said. “I tried it this morning and the tower broke in two.”
Hazelwood’s experience illustrates the purpose of this event, which is to learn the nuances of challenges and help teams be prepared when it counts. But the teams weren’t completely chilled out: Eight teams, including Hazelwood, were coached by Hopkins students before the event. Approximately 65 JHU undergraduate students have been attending 22 schools in Baltimore City once a week since October, with support from the Whiting School of Engineering Educational Support Center.
image credit: Larry Kanner of Johns Hopkins University
“I participated in Science Olympiad when I was in high school,” says Amanda Valledor (Engr ’14), the center’s STEM outreach program manager who oversees the Charm City STEM League program. “That was one of the motivations that influenced me to go into science and engineering.”
The mentorship initiative, previously a flagship program of JHU’s Center for Social Affairs, is in its first year under the Whiting School of Engineering, and Valledore said mentors who previously participated in the local Science Olympiad program It is said that people are gathering.
“The idea is to leverage their expertise and give back to the community,” she says.
One such mentor at Hopkins is Mason Holmes, a sophomore mechanical engineering major in the Whiting School of Engineering. For Roland, giving back meant volunteering at Park Middle School/Elementary School and helping develop and distribute kits for wheeled vehicle events. In this event, you have to propel your lightweight four-wheeled vehicle past two set distance lines for him, and moving between them earns you bonus points. A gate made of soda cans.
image credit: Larry Kanner of Johns Hopkins University
“This is a very complex event, with many teams competing for the first time,” Holmes said. “We need someone to guide us through the design process.” The Fort Worthington Elementary/Middle School team in Clifton Park, led by Hopkins, fine-tuned the design until the day of the event. The team originally planned to use a mousetrap as the main source of propulsion, but could not determine if it was legal. On the day of the invitation, they chose to go with rubber bands. In the first round, the team passed the second row but could not get through the gate. Team members then developed a strategy to set things up for the next round.
“Let’s talk about something interesting,” said team member Gabriel. “I didn’t know anything about this car until today, but I still managed to cross the line.”
The team got out of the gate in the second round and ended up taking first place in the league.
The Olympiad is not only about competitive events. There was also his STEM Expo, a kind of science fair that took up his two floors in Hodson Hall. There, competitors, their families and the public can view the development of zebrafish eggs under a microscope, courtesy of BioEyes, and watch a squirt-filled “elephant” mix of hydrogen peroxide, soap, food coloring, and yeast. They could see a concoction known as “toothpaste.” of a water bottle.
image credit: Larry Kanner of Johns Hopkins University
Kate McGuire, Bass ’92 (MBA), director of the Baltimore City Chapter of the Maryland Science Olympiad, was pleased with the high turnout.
“We had more kids come than last year, and for a lot of them, this is their first tournament,” she said. “It was more than I expected.”
Other Baltimore City schools that received instruction from Hopkins students include Hampstead Hill Academy, Lakeland Elementary/Middle School, Lily Mae Carol Jackson Charter School, Southwest Baltimore Charter School, Thomas Jefferson Elementary/Middle School, and Westport Academy. there was. Thanks to transportation assistance provided through a grant from the Abell Foundation, this year’s event was able to include nearly twice as many Baltimore City Public Schools teams as last year.
Science Olympiad is the nation’s largest team STEM competition for middle and high school students, with approximately 7,000 teams from all 50 states participating. The competition, which began in 1984, consists of 23 events covering nearly every field of science, from earth science to cell biology to engineering. Each team member typically participates in three or four events based on skill and interest. Competitions are held at regional, state, and national levels, with qualifying rounds at each level. The Maryland Science Olympiad State Tournament will be held on his Homewood campus on April 13th.
image credit: Larry Kanner of Johns Hopkins University
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