Highlighting Science Olympiad
Science Olympiad is a national competition in which students compete in 23 events. “Science Olympiad competitions are like academic track meets, consisting of a series of 23 team events. Each year, a portion of the events are rotated to reflect the ever-changing nature of genetics, earth science, chemistry, anatomy, physics, geology, mechanical engineering and technology.”
The events are diverse and range from things like forensics—using chemistry to solve crimes—to building a stopwatch that uses water to measure time, and even building a bottle rocket and getting a parachute to safely land a ping pong ball.
We spoke to Keiko Leonard, a science teacher at Riley and a coach of the Science Olympiad team, for some information about the club. Leonard started coaching the team around the start of her teaching career in 2005.
Above: two students test their device for the Gravity Vehicle event. The device has to propel itself using potential energy.
First, we asked the most obvious question: What is your favorite aspect of Science Olympiad?
Leonard replied, “Seeing the kids have fun and learning together. It’s like almost as much social as it is academic, and both of these are important to high school students.”
When asked what her favorite events are she told us: “To me, the most interesting events are the chemistry events. I really enjoy those. I mean because that’s my area of expertise—chemistry lab, environmental chemistry, forensics. Experimental design has also always been one of my favorites.”
Experimental Design is an event where students quite literally design their own experiments and are scored based on their “ability to design, conduct, and report the findings of an experiment entirely on-site”.
I have been on the team since my sophomore year of high school and have enjoyed every moment of it. My favorite part is not necessarily the “science” part of Science Olympiad. It’s the people that I have met. The bus rides to competitions, cracking jokes during the events, and the award shows are what made it special for me.
My favorite event is probably the Chemistry Lab event. It was the most interesting for me and inspired me to study Chemical Engineering in college.
Click here to learn more about Science Olympiad.
Above: the Science Olympiad after their state competition at Purdue University in March of 2022.