The New Rochelle Science Olympiad team racked up 12 medals at the Lower Hudson Valley Regional competition held this past Saturday at Byram Hills High School but fell just short in qualifying for this year’s New York State competition.
Despite narrowly missing a trip to “States”, students remained upbeat and vowed to return next year when the State competition will take place at Binghamton University.
“It was a great experience,” said one student. “We’ll do better next year but we still had fun.”
At a Science Olympiad high school students compete in events including Remote Sensing, Water Quality, Dynamic Planet and Thermodynamics. New Rochelle won medals for Microbe Mission (B/5th), Gravity Vehicle (B/5th), Forestry (A/5th, B/6th), Rocks and Minerals (A/4th), Magnetic Levitation (A/1st, B/2nd), Optics (A/2nd), Robot Arm (A/2nd), Protein Modeling (B/4th), Helicopters (A/2nd, B/3rd).
The top 5 teams at the regionals will compete in the New York State’s Science Olympiad Competition on March 30-31 at Canisius College in Buffalo, NY. The top two teams at the State Competition will compete in the National competition.
On Saturday, 33 teams from 24 schools competed in 23 events for event medals with team trophies going to the top six. Scarsdale A finished first and will join Ardsley (2nd), Pelham (3rd), John Jay A (4th) and Fox Lane A (5th) at the State competition.
New Rochelle fielded three teams with New Rochelle A earning a 6th place finish and a trophy. New Rochelle B finished 8th.
The New Rochelle teams dominated the “mag lev” competition. In “mag lev” students construct “up to two self-propelled magnetically levitated vehicles powered by batteries that turn up to two propellers and move the vehicle down a magnetic track while pulling a maglev sled.” The track is 2.4 meters long.
New Rochelle A completed the track in 8.5 seconds. New Rochelle B completed the track in 6.4 seconds. Only one other team in the entire competition made it down the track at all and their vehicle took over 9 minutes to complete the 2.4 meter run.
Collins Cox was the only New Rochelle freshman to compete in the regionals. Along with teammates Joshua Herman, Cox won a 2nd place medal in the “mag lev” event.
The New York State Science Olympiad is non-profit organization dedicated to improving the quality of science education in grades 5-12, increasing male, female and minority interest in science, creating a technologically literate workforce and providing recognition for outstanding achievement in science and technology. These goals are achieved by providing opportunities for teams of students to participate in 22 regional and state Science Olympiad tournaments across New York State.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Collins Cox is the son of Talk of the Sound Managing Editor Robert Cox