JLS SciOly Club

Science Olympiad is a nationwide competition. Students compete in a 15 member team across 23 events that include earth science, biology, chemistry, physics, and engineering. There are middle school division (Div B) and high school division (Div C). Science Olympiad is designed to increase a student’s interest in STEM fields and provide recognition for outstanding achievement in team events. Students compete in Science Olympiad with the top teams advancing from Regional to State to National levels.

JLS Science club is a co-ed STEM club, with the goal of promoting STEM education, encouraging collaboration, and building a closely knitted community among school, students and families. We would like to invite self-motivated students who love science, are collaborative, and are willing to spend extra time outside of school to join us. We organize seminars by professionals in the STEM fields; run workshops and students/family networking events to build a fun-loving, inquisitive, and collaborative community; and for students who would like to participate in STEM related competitions, we help to organize teams for Science Olympiad (Scioly) and Science Bowl tournaments.

In Spring 2019, our very first JLS Science Olympiad team participated in the regional (Santa Clara) Scioly tournament on March 16, 2019, and achieved very encouraging results. We ranked 16th out of 39 teams, and won medals in three individual events.

The following are short descriptions of events scheduled for the 2020 season. Where available, underlined text links to event "snapshots" created by students who competed in the 2019 season. Roughly 1/3 of events rotate out every season, but new events often are related to outgoing events.

1. Anatomy and Physiology – Participants will be assessed on their understanding of human anatomy and physiology of the integumentary, skeletal and muscular systems.
2. Boomilever – Prior to the competition teams design and build a boomilever (aka cantilever) meeting requirements supporting a minimum load and to achieve the highest structural efficiency.
3. Circuit Lab – Participants must complete tasks and answer questions about electricity and magnetism.
4. Crime Busters – Given a scenario, a collection of evidence, and possible suspects, students will perform a series of tests. The test results along with other evidence will be used to solve a crime.
5. Density Lab – Participants compete in activities and answer questions about mass, density, number density, area density, concentration, pressure, and buoyancy.
6. Disease Detectives – Students will use their investigative skills in the scientific study of disease, injury, health, and disability in populations or groups of people.
7. Dynamic Planet – Students will complete tasks related to physical and geological oceanography.
8. Elastic Launched Glider – Prior to the competition teams design, construct, and test elastic-launched gliders to achieve the maximum time aloft.
9. Experimental Design – This event will determine a team’s ability to design, conduct, and report the findings of an experiment actually conducted on site.
10. Food Science 🆕 – This event is about the chemical and physical properties of specific foods.
11. Fossils – Teams demonstrate their knowledge of ancient life by completing selected tasks at a series of stations including but not limited to fossil identification, answering questions about classification, habitat, ecologic relationships, behaviors, environmental adaptations and the use of fossils to date and correlate rock units.
12. Game On – This event will determine a team's ability to design and build an original computer game using the program Scratch incorporating the scientific theme provided to them by the supervisor.
13. Mousetrap Vehicle 🆕 – Teams will construct a vehicle that uses a mousetrap as its sole means of propulsion, quickly travels a specified distance, and stops as close as possible to the Finish Point.
14. Heredity – Participants will solve problems and analyze data or diagrams using their knowledge of the basic principles of genetics.
15. Indoor Bottle Rocket 🆕 – Participants design and construct two bottle rockets (made out of one-liter bottles) which each hold a ping-pong ball and have to launch it successfully. Participants are scored upon how long the ping-pong ball stays in the air.
16. Meteorology – This event emphasizes understanding of meteorological principles associated with severe weather with emphasis on analysis and interpretation of meteorological data, graphs, charts, and images.
17. Mission Possible 🆕 – Prior to the competition, teams make a Rube Goldberg device which uses certain tasks and runs as close as possible to the ideal time to gain the maximum number of points.
18. Ornithology 🆕 – This event will test student knowledge of birds.
19. Reach for the Stars 🆕 – Students will demonstrate an understanding and knowledge of stars, constellations, and deep sky objects.
20. Road Scholar – Teams will answer interpretive questions that may use one or more state highway maps, USGS topographic maps, Internet generated maps, a road atlas or satellite/aerial images.
21. Simple Machines 🆕 – Test fundamental concepts of simple machines, including the types of simple machines, their uses, input and output forces, mechanical advantage, and more.
22. Water Quality – Participants will be assessed on their understanding and evaluation of marine and estuary aquatic environments.
23. Write It/Do It – One student will write a description of an object and how to build it, and then the other student will attempt to construct the object from this description.

Tournament Schedule

Each tournament is a full day event in which all 15 team members attend but compete at different times, capped by an awards ceremony. A sample schedule can be seen here.

How are SciOly Tournaments scored?

Scores from each event are ranked, then ranks from all 23 events are added to get the team score, less is better. Top event teams are given medals and top school teams are awarded trophies. Top 4 schools in the Santa Clara Regional Science Olympiad get to compete in the Northern California State Science Olympiad in mid-April.

For a specific example, scores for the 2018-2019 Santa Clara Regional Science Olympiad can be found here.

Parent Volunteers

Help is needed in the following areas:

1. Coaching: Parents with subject matter expertise or project management experience are welcome. It can be convenient to coach your own child, but sometimes more effective and educational to coach others. Expect 1-2 hours a week time commitment, with some events requiring more.
2. Logistics: Many engineering events require space for building and testing, which need advance reservations. Full day tournaments require transportation, food and photography.

Useful Resource Links

1. Invitational events schedule