Science Olympiad/Science Bowl

Myrmidon73
Mon, 10 Sep 2007 19:29:29 +0000

I actually went to nationals in SB for 3 years, and in SO for 2 years, so I think I might be able to help you.

SB is totally buzzer based, and it’s just answering questions. There are no points for partial credit or anything. It’s pretty fast-paced (you run through 25 questions in almost every round, until you get into the top 8 at nationals, where the questions become way more complex). Basically, you want to keep a core team of 4 people (even though you can have an alternate), who can answer questions about specific sciences. For example, I did the math, physics, and chemistry, while our captain did physics, earth science, and astronomy, while another person did astronomy, bio, and earth, and our last person did math, chem, and bio. In that sense, we had all the categories pretty well-covered between the four of us. THE IMPORTANT THING IS KNOWING THE ANSWER. This means that you need to memorize facts, and also formulas, and know when to apply them, and do the math out quickly.

Science Olympiad has a team of 15, and you compete in different events, usually with a partner. Since I’m a numbers person, I did the math and lab events (Fermi, Food Science, Chem Lab, Physics Lab, Circuit Lab). However, there are events in other disciplines, like Bio, Astronomy, CS, pretty much everything you can learn in high school science. Lastly, there are usually 3 or 4 building events (out of about 35 total) where you build a car/catapult/bridge/tower/whatever they ask you to, and you just show how good you can engineer something. For example, a popular thing to build is a tower that is at least a certain height (usually like 30 cm) and can hold a weight of 15 kg, with the lightest weight. Often times, the difference between 1st and 20th is only a gram or two, so constant building and testing are important. Also, the tests in SO are written, so sometimes you can get partial credit. Also, the level of difficultly overall is not nearly as hard in SO, compared to SB. Often times, you will have to do an event you are not familiar with, so don’t feel too bad if your partner is the expert, and doesn’t really need your help. At the state and regional (and for some tests, national) levels, one person can finish a test all by him or herself with lots of time to spare.

They are both really fun. Most of the time, the newbies to SO get only 1, 2 or 3 (if they are really good) events, and they have the entire school year to focus on those. But, if you’re learning those same things in class, it’s not much preparation. SB, on the other hand, requires quite a bit of studying and regurgitation, especially if you are rusty at a particular science. (3 of us took AP Chem as sophs, and by senior year, it became hard to remember some of the more obscure stuff). SO is somewhat dependant how how strong of a total team you can make, because you honestly do need 15 enthusiastic members to have a good team, because between you all, you need to cover all the events. Even messing up one event can cost a state title, so it’s very important to keep your bases covered. Although you might be able to pull it off with fewer members, it’s really difficult to do more than 3 events well (I did 5 my senior year, and the last event was just hell because I was so tired from walking back and forth across a college campus, and skipping lunch,…etc).

They are definitely great, and good colleges will definitely respect you doing one or both of these. And, at my school, they were separate events, because nobody else really did science bowl except us 4.

If you have any other questions, I’d be happy to answer them.