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The Waynflete Wire |
Report from Cambridge on a Snowy Saturday
Gold medalists in the Entomology event Brandon Woo and Elly Shivel
While most of us enjoyed a snowy January Saturday in Maine, a contingent from the Upper School traveled south through the storm to Cambridge, Massachusetts, to represent Waynflete at the MIT Science Olympiad. Coached by Carol Titterton and Wendy Curtis, the team consisted of Al Ghorashi ’15, Jacob Hagler ’15, Stephen Epstein ’15, Scott Ralson ’15, Chloe Williams ’15, Brandon Woo ’15, Esme Benson ’15, Henry Johannen ’16, Gail Johnson ’16, Peter Michalakes ’16, Christian Rowe ’16, Elly Shivel ’16 Tim Clifford ’17, Emily Tabb ’17, and Willson Moore ’17. Here is the report.
The 64 teams at the MIT Science Olympiad represented states from across the country, including California, Texas, Ohio, and New York. Many of the teams present had represented their state at the National tournament last year in Florida, so the competition was against some of the best schools in the country. We finished 23rd, first of the Maine schools by a long shot.
We were thrilled to earn a gold medal in the Entomology event (Brandon Woo and Elly Shivel), but just as excited to place in the top ten in Mission Possible, a very challenging event in which competitors design a Rube-Goldberg type device (Al Ghorashi and Jacob Hagler). We placed 12th in Astronomy (Jacob Hagler and Peter Michalakes), and 14th in an airplane building event (Willson Moore and Emily Tabb). Their rubber band powered airplane, built from balsa wood and mylar, flew for 47 seconds! We also had top 20 finishes in Bungee drop (Esme Benson and Christian Rowe), Air Trajectory (Peter Michalakes and Henry Johannen) and Scrambler (Scott Ralston and Brandon Woo). We finished respectably in all of the written test events, but it was really the engineering events where we were most successful in this tournament.
The entire team had spent weeks designing, building, and trouble shooting, and their efforts clearly paid off!
