Tri-State Home School Brings Home Medals
The Tri-State Home School Science Olympiad team headed out to Indiana this past week to compete at the national level, the actual competition being held on Saturday, May 20. The team will be bringing home medals for two events: Storming the Castle and Mission Possible.
In Storming the Castle, students built a small trebuchet, a form of medieval seige equipment, that could fit within an area 1 meter square to propel a projectile such as a small ball some distance and hit a target. In previous years, hacky sacks have been used. This year a racket ball was the projectile. TSHS placed first in this event, a gold medal, for a 27 meter throw and two 28 meter throws.
Mission Possible required students to build a Rube Goldberg-type contraption to perform some specified task, utilizing the six simple machines---lever, pulley, screw, gear, inclined plane, and wheel and axle. This year, students had to drop a tennis ball onto a first class lever and make use of at least sixteen other simple machines before their contraption performed the final operation which was to unravel a roll of toilet paper from between twenty-five to thirty-five centimeters. There was also a mandatory time restriction which was announced shortly before students dropped their tennis ball. Students were allowed a brief interval so any necessary adjustments could be made. TSHS received a fifth place medal for this event.
Also of note, during the opening ceremonies on Friday, one of the TSHS team members received a Sallie Mae Scholarship for correctly answering the most questions on a science test.
Congratulations, Tri-State Home School. Keep up the good work. You make homeschoolers and Delawareans proud.
For further information about TSHS, see previous article, "DE's TSHS Science Olympiad Team" posted on Tuesday, April 18, 2006
posted by Anna Venger @ 8:00 AM
2 comments
2 Comments:
Thank you for covering this event. My DS was thrilled to win and is gearing up for next year. He truly enjoys this competition, and the opportunity to compete in science. All the kids did a wonderful job representing Delaware at the National Science Olympiad.
I also wanted to thank you for your posts on our Science Olympiad team. I am so proud of the students that participated. It is a thrill as a coach to see them emotionally grow through the process of preparing for the competition. I received a testimony about one of the kids experience this year and I think that it is very well said and probably any one of the students names could be placed in the blanks, so I would like to share it.
"Aside from these physical skills ... gained while building ........; there were the many mental skills practiced as ... problem-solved design issues, attempted to turn a creative idea into a working object, or thought through and discover some means to improve the machine's performance. For the study event ... not only learned about a specific science area ....... but ... demonstrated ... ability to obtain the necessary resources to educate ...self about a topic. ....how hard work, persistence and dedication to your task pays off, and how there is always room for improvement. That working really hard, even when you'd rather be doing something else, is so worth it."
What a blessing it is to know each student on the Tri-State Science Olympiad team. They are incredible well rounded kids!
Beth
Delaware
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