IRVINE : Students Qualify for Science Bowl Finals

Five students from Woodbridge High School will represent Orange County next month in the national Science Bowl competition in Washington.

The Woodbridge students qualified for the national finals after beating all other teams in a regional playoff last month that included students from Orange County and the San Gabriel Valley, science teacher and coach Mike Nakaue said Thursday.

The Science Bowl, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy, pits teams of the brightest scientific minds from high schools against each other in a quiz-game format. The department will pay all expenses for the teams competing in the national event.

“This competition is strictly knowledge-based,” Nakaue said.

Team members do not have to build or submit anything. They just have to think fast and be quick with the buzzer, he said.

The Woodbridge High School team--Don Coleman, Ryan Garino, Cindy Tai, Leo Kim and Yoko Kawanishi--have been meeting at lunch every day to study and practice sample questions. Questions include: “What percentage of the sun’s mass has been converted to energy?” Multiple-choice possibilities are 50, 10, 1 and .001%.

The answer is .001%.

Not all questions are multiple choice, however, Nakaue said. Some questions require students to understand not only the scientific principle behind the question, but also to make a calculation to arrive at the answer.

Example: Suppose the power of a prescription lens is 4 diopters. What is the focal length of the lens?

Answer: 25 centimeters.

Even with questions like that, Woodbridge’s team was able to defeat 16 other high schools from the region.

“They’re real sharp kids,” Nakaue said. “They did real well.”