Middle School Students Travel to Science Olympiad

Middle School Science Teacher Christine Gilliand announced that a group of SMS science students had a successful trip to the NY State Science Olympiad tournament in Rochester last weekend.

The team earned its fair share of medals and here are the winners:

• Shock Value (1st) -- Joe Weintraub and Richard Xu
• Simple Machines (1st) -- Richard Xu and Ryan Jacobowitz
• Rotor Egg Drop (5th) -- Ryan Jacobowitz and Sneha Dey
• We placed in the top 10 in:
• Can't Judge a Powder (7th) -- Dan Goldstein and Wolf Cukier
• Metric Mastery (8th) -- Arjun Ravi and Derek Chi
• Road Scholar (9th) -- Arjun Ravi and Shamika Dhuri
• Experimental Design (10) -- Ken Tomita, Sara Hezi and Derek Chi

Overall, the team finished in 17th place out of 37 teams.

We asked SMS Science teacher Christine Gilliand how students prepared for the Olympiad and here is what she shared: "The Scarsdale Middle School Science Olympiad team began working on the events for the competition in October. Students work with the various Science Teacher/Coaches depending on the event they are involved with. Each of the teachers will coach 5 different events. Some of the events are building events where the students have to design, build, test and redesign something, such as a car, a lever, a helicopter, etc. Some of the events are lab events where the students have to learn and practice various skills, such as crime scene investigation, powder testing, identification (rocks, insects, birds, etc.). Some events are strictly testing events where the students study and take a written exam, in subjects such as meteorology, solar system, disease detective and green generations (alternative energy and sustainability issues)."

She continued, "The regional competition for Lower Hudson Valley was held the first weekend in March. SMS entered 3 teams (approximately 40 students) into this competition against other middle school in the region. The competition took place at our middle school, which takes an enormous amount of time and effort from the entire middle school science department, the secretarial staff and the custodians in order for the tournament to run smoothly. The top 4 teams from the regional tournament are then invited to compete at the New York State tournament, which was just held in Rochester this past weekend."

She added, "Just a little history, every year since we began the team in 2001, SMS has placed high enough at the regional tournament to compete at the state level. After the regional tournament we look at all the students and choose the top 15 for our state competing team. In addition to the competing team, we also take up to 10 students as a support team."

Here are the names of those who competed on the team: Anika Agarwal, Derek Chi, Wolf Cukier, Sneha Dey, Shamika Dhuri, Daniel Goldstein, Sara Hezi, Ryan Jacobowitz, Adina Mistry, Megumi Ohara, Arjun Ravi, Jack Silvers, Ken Tomita, Joe Weintraub and Richard Xu.

The supporting team members (these students did not compete, but helped the team in many ways in preparation and the day of the event) were: Sara Bali, Anika Dhuri, Riya Gupta, Padma Narayanan, Conner Raff, Nola Riina, Chloe Schneider, Matthew Shepetin and Gillian Zitrin.

The teachers who have been working with the students during the year and traveled with the team were: Cristine Gilliland, Jay Gandelman, Ken Raff, Laurie Ciccone and Jeff Tuttle. We also had some additional help during the year from Travis Richards and Jeff Williams.