Competition Helps Science Soar to Olympian Heights

From a roof at the San Diego County Office of Education, school officials dropped three dozen “naked” eggs Tuesday morning while elementary school students from throughout the county looked on.

The spectators giggled and clapped as some of the eggs landed in boxes filled with cotton while other eggs splattered on the pavement below.

The “naked egg drop” was part of the nation’s first Elementary Science Olympiad, hosted by the County Office of Education, to make science fun and practical, officials said. Replete with an opening ceremony, music and medals for the winners, the one-day event drew 200 fourth- through six-graders from 20 schools.

In addition to building safe landing pads for raw eggs, paper airplanes were folded and aimed at targets, straws were bent to hold bricks, and old thread spools, wound up with rubber bands, raced down a “drag strip.”

“We knew we were gonna win this one,” said Stasi Gllegos, 10, of San Diego’s Silvergate Elementary, when her team’s grocery bag filled with Styrofoam “squiggles” and cotton was declared the winner in the egg drop. “We knew it all the time because we had tested it before.”

Team members Martine Krumholz, 10, and George Soares, 9, said that they had spent two weeks preparing the nearly weightless bag that prevented eggs, dropped from heights of five, seven and eight meters, from cracking.

Robert Dean, one of the Office of Education coordinators, said that the idea for the event came from the more-advanced science competitions held for junior high and high school students.

“We think of science as the practical application of math and many other things,” Dean said. “We hope that having something like this would teach the kids problem-solving.”

“I’ve been looking forward to this for three or four months,” said John Sillman, 9, of Murray Manor Elementary in San Diego.

“All night long, I was dreaming of winning awards,” John said.

The aluminum-foil “barge” that his team built held 30 pennies before sinking and placed about fourth or fifth, he said. A “hot box” that his team built to keep water in a beaker warm by insulating it placed 10th.

“That’s OK, other people made theirs a little better,” John said. “Anyway, I want to be a marine biologist.”

Brian Busby, 11, of Encanto Elementary in San Diego, who was defeated in the spool race, said it had taken him two weeks to find the right spool.

“I found that the plastic ones were too light, and the wooden ones were best,” Brian said, after his spool puttered about 2.5 meters down the 4-meter racing strip. “Most of it relies on luck.”

The day culminated in a pentathlon that involved holding a water balloon while answering questions about science, dribbling a basketball, walking a balance beam and throwing a Frisbee.

Returning home with gold medals was the team from Chapparral Elementary. Silver medals went to Encanto Elementary, and Del Mar Hills Elementary captured the bronze.