After a day of building helicopters, exploring human anatomy and doing the Harlem Shake, organizers announced Davis High School and Fairfield Junior High as the state Science Olympiad winners.
More than 800 junior high and high school students across the state competed in the Science Olympiad on Saturday, a nationwide competition consisting of 24 events. The events were either building something or doing a written exam. The events ranged from creating an insulator to keep a beaker full of water at a certain temperature, identifying powders by mixing them with chemicals, building elastic launch gliders or labeling body parts at the anatomy event.
“I touched a brain!” said Kindra Hamaker, a seventh grade student at Oquirrh Hills Middle School. “My friend and I were freaking out. We just stood there petting the brain. It was squishy.”
Hamaker said, after the event in the James Talmage Building, she walked next to a U student and said, “We touched a brain!” The student looked at her strangely and said, “That’s good.” She and her friend couldn’t stop talking about the brain for two hours.
Hamaker’s coach, Todd Monson, an eighth grade science teacher at Oquirrh Hills, said it was an honor and a thrill to experience the enthusiasm of the students loving and interacting with science.
“I think it’s really important to start science when you’re young so you can understand the concepts,” said Cody Merrell, an eighth grade student at Fairfield, “and you can help people by using your skills that you’ve found.”
Ashley Nicholes, Utah Science Olympiad program coordinator, said the event was important to let students know that science “isn’t just sitting in a lab” but many things can happen with science.
“STEM fields are becoming one of the most needed fields,” she said. “We’re going to need these jobs for us to build a better society.”
Students came with flags and posters to represent their schools and wore purple shirts with the periodic table on their back or lab coats with goggles. While they waited for the award ceremony, a couple of students yelled “Marco” to hear a “Polo” from the other side of the arena. Near the end of the event, the Olympiad filmed the students doing the Harlem Shake to put on YouTube.
The U also used the event for recruitment as different departments circled around the outside of the arena to show off their own science projects.
The winners were judged by the team’s multiple participation in the events and by the most medals for a school. Nationals will be at Wright State University, Ohio, on May 17 and 18.