On Feb. 9, the DHS Science Olympiad team competed in their regional competition held at Montgomery College. The team needed to place in the top ten teams to advance to states, a feat which they accomplished, placing tenth out of dozens of teams. The team was able to walk away with multiple first, second, and third-place medals as well as some ribbons for fourth through sixth place.
The state competition, which was held Saturday, Apr. 5, was the team’s final test this year, after many months of working to perfect their event notes and builds. The event was held at Clarksville Middle School in Clarksville, Md., a change from the typical venue of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Md.
Before the competition, the team was already feeling the heat as they worked to finish building and testing their designs to ensure that they would run smoothly for the competition. One event, air trajectory, involves building a cannon to launch a ping pong ball at a specific target. The air trajectory team was at DHS for hours last week after school to test their cannon and make necessary adjustments.
Unfortunately, the DHS team only earned medals for two events, Tower and Hovercraft. For Tower, the team needed to build a tower that was both lightweight and could hold the most weight. For this event, the team placed fourth overall out of 24 teams with a score of 2,210. In Hovercraft, the goal was to make a self-propelled, levitating vehicle to move down a track. The Hovercraft team placed third overall out of ten teams with a score of 87.59.
While these were the only events to earn awards, there were many other events that the team placed in the top 50 percent. For instance, the team placed in the top 12 for the Anatomy and Physiology event, Helicopter, Materials Science and Optics. Even though the team didn’t do as well as they had hoped, they still tried their best and had a good time.
Since the team didn’t place high enough, they unfortunately won’t make it to the national competition, marking the end of the 2024-25 Science Olympiad team.
