Stanford’s Science Olympiad tournament took place on January 20, 2024, and Woodside competed for the second year in a row, placing 20th out of the many high schools that competed.
For the competition, multiple high schools send teams and each one has a smaller group of people who participate in different events. The tournament occurs at Stanford University’s campus and lasts all day, from the morning to late afternoon.
“Science Olympiad club officers labeled the competition as optional,” freshman Lucas Kuo said. “[The tournament overall] was pretty chill and it was less stressful than I thought it would be though.”
Another freshman, Lucas Wepnner, in the Science Olympiad, shares his experience during the all-day tournament where high school teams compete to be first.
“[The Stanford tournament] was really laid back and the people were very nice,” Wepnner said. “The experience did feel slightly unfair though because some people had three blocks between their events so they got to stay longer and do less.”
During the competitions, different groups compete in different events corresponding with various scientific topics. Some of the events included in the tournament were Astronomy, Fossils, Ecology, Forestry, and many more.
“I [participated in] three events,” Kuo said. “Code busters where we decode things, experimental design [where you conduct an] experiment off an everyday object you get, and optics [which was split into] two parts, a written assignment about optics, the practical being given a box, a laser, and mirrors [with the objective of letting] the lasers bounce off the mirrors closest to the target.”
There was a total of 23 events in the tournament, and the club participated in about two-thirds of them.
“[I was] in the ecology [and geology] categories,” Wepnner said. “We studied nature, animals, food pyramids, estuaries, and biomes from different places in the world for Ecology. For geology, we had to do rock mapping by [identifying] which rocks were what.”
Woodsides’ Science Olympiad competed against about 30 other teams, doing the best in the Forestry and Fermi Questions categories.
“I really [enjoyed] the tournament, being with the teammates I practiced with was something that [made the experience] fun,” Kuo said.
