Entering the 2023-2024 school year, along with the many different clubs and activities, arose a new competitive team at Newman. Reestablish this year by Russell Huber ‘26, Jai Bansal ‘26, and Thomas Gershanik ‘26, the Science Olympiad team is a competitive team where members can compete in 23 different events in mixed fields of science like earth science, biology, chemistry, physics, and engineering.
Even though Mr. Jones is the faculty advisor who helped charter this team, the Science Olympiad team is completely student-led. Each individual was responsible for studying and preparing for their event(s). From test events, like astronomy, to practical events, like a chemistry lab, to building events that require specific measurements and flight times, this team of 15 people–composed of all sophomores–worked hard in preparation for the tournament.
For many of these students, it was their first time even participating in these events. Liam Wilder, who is on the Scrambler Build Team, stated: “It is something I have never seen or tried before and it was really fun to work with Michael [White]”. With so many events, most students had to double up and compete in two or three events.
On Friday 12th, the team had their last team practice before the competition. After working hard for 4 hours, they were ready to leave the next morning around 4 AM. The day finally arrived and the team got on the bus and made their way to Louisiana Christian University for the competition. The team arrived at 9:00 AM, a little cold but alive and ready to take on the competition. As many of the team had multiple events, they were constantly running around from event to event for a couple of hours. After ordering lunch, they waited for the last event to finish before heading home.
The team placed 6th in the state overall, a massive accomplishment for the team’s inaugural year at Newman. A few individual events accomplishments are as follows:
2nd in Forestry
3rd in Fermi
3rd in Forensics
LIST OF EVENTS:
LIFE, PERSONAL, & SOCIAL SCIENCE:
- Anatomy and Physiology (Aditi S. and Helen G.)
- Disease Detectives (Morgan B. and Russell H.)
- Ecology (Aditi S. and Lilly P.)
- Forestry (Lilly P. and Morgan B.)
- Microbe Mission (Aditi S. and Vivian Z.)
EARTH & SPACE SCIENCE:
- Astronomy (Jackson D. and Vivian Z.)
- Dynamic Planet (Jai B. and Tripp D.)
- Fossils (Helen G. and Tripp D.)
- Geologic Mapping (Thomas G. and Tripp D.)
PHYSICAL SCIENCE & CHEMISTRY
- Air Trajectory
- Chem Lab (Jackson D. and Morgan B.)
- Detector Building
- Forensics (Nick C. and Thomas G.)
- Optics (Chase H. and Jai B.)
- Wind Power
TECHNOLOGY & ENGINEERING
- Flight
- Robot Tour
- Scrambler (Liam W. and Michael W.)
- Tower (Chase H. and Nick C.)
INQUIRY & NATURE OF SCIENCE
- Codebusters (Jai B., Logan D., and Russell H.)
- Experimental Design (Jackson D. and Logan D.)
- Fermi Questions (Jai B. and Logan D.)
- Write It Do It (Russell H. and Thomas G.)
If any of these events or topics sounds interesting to you, consider joining the team! If you have specific questions about certain events, you can contact the people whose names are next to that event. If you have any broad questions, contact Mr. Jones ([email protected]) or one of our captains!
We are so proud of our Science Olympians and we can’t wait for next year!
