Paul Kane has become the Edmonton region’s Science Olympic champion for the first time in 13 years thanks to a group of student scientists.
Megan Ferguson, Adam Boljkovac, Ziyou Zou, Riley Heemeryck and Amanda Klaczek became the high school regional champions of the 2013 Edmonton Science Olympics earlier this month.
It’s the first time the school has won the award since 2000, said coach Michael Ng, who was a member of Paul Kane’s Science Olympic squad back then.
“It’s been kind of a Chinese zodiac (cycle),” he said. “Thirteen years have passed.”
The Edmonton Science Olympics is an annual event that’s meant to encourage students to get into engineering and science, said Richard Liebrecht, spokesperson for the Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of Alberta (APEGA), which sponsors the event.
Several hundred students took part in the daylong event on March 2 at the Shaw Conference Centre, including teams from St. Albert’s Marie Poberan, Elmer S. Gish, Robert Rundle, Father Jan and Keenooshayo schools.
“The sciences are sometimes perceived as somewhat stodgy,” Liebrecht said, and the Olympics are meant to show kids that science can be fun.
The Olympics challenge students to apply their knowledge in a number of hands-on challenges that vary by grade level, Liebrecht said. Elementary school students had to build containers that could protect eggs during a fall, for example, while junior high students had to create a human-powered vehicle with a working catapult.
High-school teams had to build a working telescope using only lenses, paper and tape; crack a coded message; seek microscopic creatures in sphagnum moss and build a tower using nothing but cardboard and scissors.
The Paul Kane squad agreed that the Olympics were “a great mental exercise” and a lot of fun.
The time pressure also made it pretty intense, added Klaczek.
“You don’t know what to expect, and you have to think things up on the spot,” she said.
Only some last-second brainwaves (such as having a teammate stand on her back to finish the tower) got them through some of the events.
The team took gold in the sink or swim event, which had teams build a remote-controlled submarine that could navigate an obstacle course. Whereas many of the participating vehicles failed to move or even sink, theirs zipped through the course in 28 seconds – almost a minute faster than their closest competitor, Boljkovac said.
“We wanted a strong structure that didn’t displace much water,” he said.
So the team went with a plastic, box-like frame with two propellers for horizontal and vertical movement. The square shape gave it stability, while its thin control wire reduced drag. It also had neutral buoyancy, meaning it wasn’t constantly trying to bob up or sink down.
Ferguson said she was surprised when they won the regional title, as other teams had won more medals than them.
“It’s great to know we’re the biggest nerds in Edmonton and area,” she joked.
Ng said he was very proud of the students.
“At first it was kind of hard, as they had so many outside commitments,” he said, but they pulled together and showed great teamwork.
The team members said they all shared a love of science, with many planning to get into engineering or science careers after graduation.
Science is cool because it relates to stuff in real life, said Ferguson.
“You can learn how to explode things and know what Cheetos burn like,” she said, referring to two common high-school experiments.
“It’s not like social studies where it’s like, ‘Hey, what’s your ideology?’ It’s, ‘Hey, you can do this and apply it.’”
