Science Olympiad 2017

On Saturday SJC hosted its last Science Olympiad. Teams from 16 schools attended and the total number of teams was probably higher than 16 because some schools brought both high school and middle school teams.

I looked around for some interesting photo opportunities and did not find much. Hover craft sounded interesting. It was in the Hansen Recreation Center, but when I was there, the teams were doing the written part of the activity.

Students in a Chemistry Lab on the third floor of Science were doing a Forensic activity. They had to identify powders, hairs, and some other things.

A few middle school students were playing with Legos in the Core Building. The person in charge explained that most of the teams had completed the Write-It, Do-It activity and those remaining were finishing up.

The activity has two parts. In part one some students look at a model and explain in writing, without diagrams, how the model is constructed. Below is the model that they were describing.

 In the second part, their teammates must use their written descriptions to reconstruct the original object as best they can. Below are three of the attempts. None of them or any of the others were very close. The judges had a challenge in ranking the results from best to worst.

If the results of the Olympiad get posted, they will probably be available here.

Saint Joseph's College has hosted this regional Science Olympiad for at least two decades. I believe that the late Duvall Jones was the person who brought the event to campus. Duvall taught Biology and was an avid birdwatcher. In the early years the events were run mostly by faculty members and for a two or three years I was in charge of the astronomy event. I was happy when the science students took over most of the work in running and judging events, and that was many years ago.

Over the years I have written about a lot of events that have taken place at Saint Joseph's College--plays, musical performances, special events such as Homecoming and Little 500. SJC is the second most common tag that I have on posts. (Construction is first.) I plan to enjoy the next two months of events at SJC because I know that I will really miss the activity next year.

On Thursday the SJC basketball teams played their last games in the Field House. Both the men's and women's teams won their games. Over the years the basketball teams have had some very successful seasons (as well as some seasons that were not very successful.) Hanging in the Field House are banners of their appearances in the NCAA Division II tournament with special banners for the years in which they made the final eight. (Here is my post on the 2010 banner.)

I hope that the various artifacts and documents that tell the history of the College will be preserved.