Palo Alto and Gunn high schools students outshined their peers from around the region in an Olympics-like competition that tested their science skills and engineering know-how.
Palo Alto High finished first in the Bay Area Regional Science Olympiad Saturday at Foothill High School in Pleasanton. Gunn students placed third.
Students from the two high schools were among hundreds of high-schoolers and middle-schoolers from the area who participated. They did everything from perform experiments to engineer small rubber-band-powered helicopters, test wind turbines they built and compete in several other events.
Find out what's happening in Palo Altowith free, real-time updates from Patch.
“I think it’s really fun,” said Palo Alto senior Michael Yuan. “You learn a lot.”
Yuan said he spent a week building a windpipe musical instrument out of pipes for the event’s Sounds of Music challenge. He and a teammate had to perform a few songs in front of a small audience.
Find out what's happening in Palo Altowith free, real-time updates from Patch.
“I think there’s a lot of ingenuity (at the Olympiad),” Yuan said.
Mike McKee, director of the Bay Area Regional Science Olympiad, said more students are getting involved. It has grown from 12 school teams three years ago to about 43, with a total of 400-500 students. Teams vie for gold, silver and bronze medals in each event.
“It’s fun; it is outright fun,” McKee said. “The kids are just very excited about it.”
Gunn sophomore Tony Yau and his teammate, senior Elliot Akama-Garren, may not have captured a medal for finishing first, second, or third in the Wind Power challenge, but they said they had a blast designing a wind turbine and testing it in front of a few fans to see how much power it produced.
“It’s pretty challenging,” Akama-Garren said.
“I think it’s fun and interesting,” Yau said. “It really helps us think more about renewable energy.”
A lot of the participants said one thing they liked about doing the experiments, designing turbines, helicopters, musical instruments and other contraptions is that it gave them a better hands-on experience than reading a textbook.
“You've got to have a fundamental understanding of science in order to do this,” McKee said. “Learning out of a traditional textbook doesn’t engage the students in the same way.”
Log on to barso.org to find out the results of the Bay Area Regional Science Olympiad and for more information.
