MIT Science Olympiad

Team Photo
Front Row: Nick Hagler, Dorrie Pinchbeck, Ingrid Ansel-Mullen, Quilla Flanagan-Burt, Callie Banksmith, Shuhao Liu.
Back Row: Thys Geldenhuys, Phoebe Hart, Hannah Babcock, Sara Wasdahl, Tabby Al Musawi, Abby Aleshire, Lily Fanburg, Luna Soley and Molly McNutt.

The fourth annual MIT Science Olympiad Invitational Tournament was held on Saturday, January 20, 2018 on the campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Seventy schools from around the country—including many of the top Science Olympiad teams in the nation—competed in 23 science and engineering events.

Waynflete’s team of 7 seniors, including captains Nick Hagler and Luna Soley, 6 juniors, and 2 sophomores had their best finish yet in this tournament. The highlight of the competition was a very impressive 13th place finish in Mission Possible (a Rube Goldberg machine), designed and constructed by seniors Nick Hagler and Shuhao Liu (see video below). Shuhao and junior Hannah Babcock did very well in the Optics event (laser-mirror shoot and written test), finishing 24th overall.

Other notably strong events for Waynflete were Remote Sensing (analysis of satellite images) by seniors Dorrie Pinchbeck and Callie Banksmith, Materials Science by Nick and senior Sara Wasdahl, Game On (design and build a computer game) by juniors Phoebe Hart and Lily Fanburg, Disease Detectives by Sara and junior Tabby Al Musawi, Anatomy & Physiology by Lily and senior Molly McNutt, Hovercraft (design and build a hovercraft plus a written test) by Tabby and Phoebe (note: they named their device “Ralph”), and Fermi Questions (estimating enormously large and small numbers without resources) by Nick and Shuhao.

The students had fun, worked hard, and learned a lot of science. The tournament also served as a dry run for the State Science Olympiad tournament held at USM on March 31. (Two US teams and one MS team will compete at States.) The team was coached by Science Chair Wendy Curtis and teacher Carol Titterton.

Videos: Nick and Shuhao run their Mission Possible; Molly and Sara test the weight of sand that their tower can hold.