Building trebuchets and bridges, Tri-North Science Olympiad team hopes for gold this year

“That’s about five feet!” exalts Albie Singleton, removing his eye protection after initiating the trebuchet for launch to conduct his team’s measurement.

The team gets closer to measure with him, and exclaims almost in unison, “It’s more like 9 feet!”

In the trebuchet competition portion of the Science Olympiad, student-competitors must construct a trebuchet at scale to volley a projectile. Whichever team can launch the selected item the farthest wins. Last year’s national champion created a trebuchet that sent an object soaring just over 18 feet. The Tri-North Middle School team has many months of training before the road to state begins, so there is plenty of time to improve, but not much margin for error.

Singleton and his teammates, Henry Courtney and Clementine Shoulberg, are ready to take on the trebuchet competition, and have theirs send items soaring 15 feet and beyond.

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The Science Olympiad is a competition held at the regional, state, and national levels testing the students’ knowledge of educational standards in science across the United States.

Tri-North Trojans hope to better 2019 showing

The COVID-19 pandemic partially restricted competition the past two years, but the Tri-North Trojans are looking to make their first appearance on the national stage this year. During the 2021-22 season, the team placed second at the state tournament. Of the 23 competition events, the team placed first in three , second in four, third in four, fourth in two, and fifth in four events. Additionally, the Trojans had competitors who placed in the top 10 in the state in five additional events.

Since its inception in 1985, only one team from Indiana has won the national competition, and it was fourth-ranked Thomas Jefferson Middle School of Valparaiso, Indiana, in both 1993 and 1996. Tri North Middle School is hoping this is their year to shine.

Teams compete in up to 23 events over the course of one day, with every student competing in either three or four events. It’s a lot of work for a small group, so teams are normally made up of about 30 students. As this is a middle school competition, all of the team members must be from 7th or 8th grade, with some limited exceptions.

To ensure the integrity of competition, the events change every two years, although the education standards may not. At Tri-North, students conduct practice under the direction of Coach Martha Bowman on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Beyond improving their odds of success, every practice is an excellent opportunity to better the students’ understanding of scientific knowledge and application.

There is a consistent buzz in the science lab at Tri-North composed of clattering objects and scientific jargon, as students conduct repetitive experiments based on the scientific method to improve their results. Occasionally, there is unrelated social conversation, but the students are consistently on task, according to Science Olympiad assistant coach James Simon, who also serves as the jazz band instructor at Tri-North.

“We are just here to guide the students. They are excited to be here and enjoy what they are doing, so we are mostly just here to help answer their questions and make sure they are being safe,” Simon said.

Learning through doing

At a practice last month, Simon worked with students on the “Roller Coaster” competition. The winner will have produced a roller coaster track that carries a ball to a certain destination within a given time parameter.

Just across the training area, Hank Tayloe, Nico Luther, and Aqeela Belogun honed their deductive skills to see how they can identify a powdery substance based on its chemical properties via chemical reactions for the Can’t Judge A Powder Competition. The contestants don protective gear, smell and examine the substances, then mix them with other chemicals to figure out what they are. In this event, competitors must know which reaction is caused by which combination of substances, and have to be able to do it from memory.

In the Crime Busters event, students use forensics lab skills. It’s kind of like the board game “Clue,” just more scientific.

Although it’s highly unlikely there will ever be a bridge constructed of balsa wood that can support multiple vehicles driving across it simultaneously, the team at Tri-North, composed of Daniel Cartledge, Gabriel Cohen, Seth Goldstein, and Margaret Sui, is testing how strong of a bridge they can construct from this material. The team’s bridge with the best ratio of weight held versus the weight of the actual bridge wins this contest. Using wood, super glue, and small razor blades, these bridges are constructed, weighed and tested for sturdiness. Sometimes the glue gets the wood stuck to their hands. The team reports acetone is the best medicine to remedy this.

In the flight competition, the paper plane is powered by a rubber band instead of a shoulder-elbow motion. The team who constructs the airplane that stays in the air for the longest wins. During construction, students outlined all of the pitfalls — rubber bands breaking from stretching them too far, the wood snapping or even cracking a little, and attempts that just don’t work out sometimes for unexplained reasons. The Wright Brothers would certainly be able to relate.

The COVID-19 pandemic restricted Science Olympiad competition in 2020 and 2021 to only virtual participation, and with in-person competition set to resume this year, the Trojans are looking to improve on their finish from 2019.

The regional competition takes place on Feb. 4, 2023. Many of the student competitors on this year’s team compared it to the summer and winter Olympics, citing the intensity of the competition and the focused practice that goes into it. Tri North placed best of all the schools in the Monroe County Community School Corporation, taking third overall. They’ll need to bring home gold at state in order to qualify for the national contest.

The first opportunity students will have to test their scientific mettle is on Dec. 10 at the Raymond Park Middle School Invitational in Indianapolis.

The instructors at Tri North Middle School and many of the students' parents provide education and guidance as coaches, and other parents cheer students on and keep them motivated and encouraged. If you would like to see how you can support this year’s Tri-North Middle School Science Olympiad team, contact Tri-North Middle School at (812) 330-7745 or Dr. Martha Bowman, the team’s coach, by email at mbowman@mccsc.edu.

This article originally appeared on The Herald-Times: Science Olympiad team builds deeper understanding of science concepts