Students vie in science contest

Salk, Wisdom Lane advance to state Olympiad

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More than 400 cheering students gathered in the auditorium of Wisdom Lane Middle School on Feb. 9, in an atmosphere more like the revelry of a Super Bowl win than a celebration of being smart. Forty teams cheered themselves hoarse as they received their awards in the middle school division of the Eastern Nassau Regional Science Olympiad.
Island Trees, Levittown, Seaford and Wantagh students all scored impressively in the day’s 26 events. Jonas E. Salk Middle School, and its archrival, Wisdom Lane, both earned berths at the state Olympiad, to be held in Syracuse in April. Teams from the two schools placed seventh and third, respectively, in the overall scoring, behind winner South Woods Middle School in Syosset.
Salk’s three squads garnered a total of 22 medals, including a first in parasitology, in a grueling day of contests that pitted students against one another in physical experiments, creating devices such as roller coasters, elastic-driven gliders and robot-driven battery buggies; and a wide range of written tests on subjects ranging from water quality to herpetology to anatomy and physiology. Wisdom’s three squads racked up an even more impressive tally of 29 medals, including three first-place and three second-place finishes in individual categories.
Wantagh and Seaford middle schools brought home two medals each. Other local schools that did well included W. Tresper Clarke Middle School, in the East Meadow School District; John W. Dodd Middle School, in Freeport; Island Trees Middle School, in Levittown; and Merrick Avenue Middle School, in Merrick.
The day’s events demanded an impressively varied palette of skills, including robotics, aerodynamics and calculating stresses in situations as diverse as the boomilever competition and “mystery architecture.” Students also had to master an enormous amount of scientific information in subjects such as meteorology, heredity, potions and poisons and the solar system. The breadth of knowledge on display was all the more impressive because none of the competitors were older than 14.

Throughout the day, excited, pizza-fueled students bounced from event to event as they ratcheted up their scores. Teams received points according to their placements in each event — 40 points for 40th place, 23 points for 23rd, 9 points for ninth, and so on. The team with the lowest overall score was the winner.
Each event had a series of rules, and penalties were assessed for infractions. In the roller coaster competition, for example, contestants lost points if their apparatus failed to meet the specified minimum and maximum dimensions or exceeded the posted run times for the courses. Because competitors did not know the length of the run until the morning of the event, they had to be prepared to increase or decrease the length of their courses accordingly. Students could also accumulate bonus points for added features, such as jumps.
In the boomilever, students had to build frames from balsa wood from which a bucket was suspended. Sand was added to the bucket until each apparatus failed. Judges calculated the final score by dividing the weight of the sand by the weight of the device. Wisdom Lane’s C team took an impressive second place, as their 24.6-gram frame held 4.4 kilograms, for a final score of 178.6.
Each squad had a maximum of 15 members, from which they could field up to three two-person teams per event.
In the academic competitions, students took a number of written quizzes exploring the various facets of each subject. In the Water Quality exam, for example, they had to know about “all the water in the world,” Salk science teacher and team coach Paul Zaratin said. Students had to determine the salinity of water samples, as well as the presence of other foreign particulates — pollution, Zaratin said.
In herpetology — the study of amphibious species such as frog, newts and turtles — students had to demonstrate familiarity with the animals and their characteristics.
In addition to successes, there were disappointments as well. Despite their preparation, none of the Salk roller coaster teams placed. B team members Anthony Harris and Jake Tripi had difficulty with the duct tape connectors in their impressive 60-centimeter course. “We can make as many corrections as we need to within the eight-minute time limit,” an unruffled Harris said in mid-competition. But in the end, the clock caught up with them before they could complete even one clean 45-second run.
Other schools had similar problems. Caleb Mann, from John W. Dodd Middle School in Freeport, had one of the most interesting roller coasters of the day. Rather than mimic full-scale devices, as other teams did, he used two sheets of cantilevered clear plastic Lexan and placed strips of balsa wood on their surfaces to create his course. Unfortunately, his marble snagged on the wood strips, and he, too, timed out.
Seaford’s Sophia Barnjak had an extra reason for feeling disappointed. Out of the 40 schools participating in the elastic-launched glider event, many with multiple entries, she placed an outstanding seventh. But she had hoped to beat her brother, who placed seventh in last year’s Olympiad. Instead, she only tied him, with a glide time of 6.5 seconds.