Science Olympiad students from Levittown’s Jonas E. Salk Middle School and Wisdom Lane Middle School prepared for their upcoming Science Olympiad regional competition by participating in a hands-on scrimmage event on Jan. 9. The students put their projects to the test and made any adjustments that they found necessary.
Science Olympiad is an organization which challenges students in the various science disciplines, allowing them to compete with students in their division through different tournaments. The scrimmage, which was hosted at Jonas E. Salk Middle School, gave students from both schools the opportunity to showcase their projects during specific event challenges such as the battery buggy, boomilever, elastic launch glider, mystery architecture and roller coaster. The scrimmage gave the teams a taste of what the competition will be like, the chance to time their projects and fix any issues.
Both Salk and Wisdom students will compete against other schools from throughout Nassau County during the Western Long Island Division B Regional competition on Feb. 9 at Wisdom Lane Middle School. Both Levittown schools had winning teams at last years regional competition and qualified for the New York State Science Olympiad competition. Each hopes to qualify once again for states.
Jonas E. Salk Middle School Science Olympiad advisers Doug Neu and Paul Zaratin, along with Wisdom Lane Middle School Science Olympiad advisers Meghan Olsen and Vanessa Kowalczyk, supported the students during the event. Kevin McDermott, science director of the Levittown Public Schools, explained that the scrimmage is not a competition to see who does best, but is more of a learning experience for the students as they prepare for February.
“It’s really about them coming in and trying their projects under different conditions so they can see if it’s actually going to work,” he said. “It might work once they build it but not work when they bring it somewhere else. They come in here, they try it under the real rules and conditions and then they can take it and make improvements. That’s the goal.”
