WOHS Science Olympiad team attends its first-ever competition

WEST ORANGE, NJ — The newly-formed Science Olympiad team at West Orange High School had the opportunity to attend its first regional competition at Union County College in Cranford on Jan. 10, and the experience proved to be exciting and valuable.

West Orange seniors Derek Lim and Abraham Dada built the team with the help of fellow seniors Divya Anand and Saurya Sanghvi . Faculty members Ronald Brandt and Michelle Schultz served as advisers and the high school PTA provided the $300 registration fee.

The Science Olympiad is a nationally-based competition for both middle and high school teams. The rules allow for a maximum of seven seniors, and five juniors and one sophomore also joined the WOHS team. All work and preparation were orchestrated by the students directly, as required by the rules of the competition.

The competition was a full-day program in which small teams of one to three students from each school competed in 12 separate events involving chemistry, biology, physics and engineering skills. Some of the competitions involved design and construction of projects ahead of time that were brought to the competition. For example, one student had to build a helicopter, another had to build a tower that could support heavy weights and another had to build a protein model. Some competitions were unveiled to the students during the competition itself, such as a chemistry lab challenge, a forensics case, and challenged having to do with astronomy, anatomy and microbes.

Twenty-four schools participated and all competitions were judged by college-level professors based on established criteria and points awarded.

“At the end of the day, awards were given out in each of the individual events as well as team trophies,” Brandt said in a press release. “The top schools move on to the state level. Although some of our students received individual recognition, the team did not score well enough to get a trophy and move on. The 23 schools that we competed against have been participating for many years and began preparing for this year’s competition in September. We didn’t start until December. So we consider this first year as a learning experience.”

  FEATURED, West Orange High School