Apollo-Ridge elementary school students know that it takes more than 14.6 million 9-foot-long elephants lined up to ring the Earth's equator.
They know how to calculate the number of marbles in a jar and to identify black bear tracks as a result of the school's second annual Science Olympiad on Wednesday and Thursday in the elementary school in Kiski Township.
About 175 fourth- and fifth-graders split into teams and competed in science trivia games and experiments that had them shooting rubber bands and dropping eggs.
“This is all about making the real world connect to science,” said Jason Wagner, an Apollo-Ridge fourth- and fifth-grade science teacher who coordinated the event.
“It's a nice focus of science at a good age,” he said. “If you make it exciting now, they will remember it.”
Wagner has been volunteering to help teach Science Olympiads for 15 years in inner city schools for Pittcon, the Pittsburgh Conference on Analytical Chemistry and Applied Spectroscopy. According to its website, it presents the world's largest annual premier conference and exposition on laboratory science.
Pittcon and other nonprofits provided grants to pay for scientific materials and games for the two-day event.
The event kicked off with presentations from the Pennsylvania Game Commission and local experts on engineering and genetics.
On Thursday, students competed in friendly science games such as “Ah poop! Who made those tracks?” where teams had 25 minutes to correctly match the appropriate rubber scat and animal tracks with the right animal.
Taking a break from the natural world, students applied their skills at Contraption Construction, where they had to build a structure out of small pine planks that would roll a ball, bounce it off of a sloped surface and through a funnel.
“We did OK, but making the funnel was hard,” said Emma George, 10, of Apollo, a fifth-grader.
Her classmate, Emma Sinnamond, 11, of North Apollo, said she like using the building planks, “but the balancing of the pieces is hard.”
Nothing was made too easy for students, especially in “Estimania” where they were given real world problems, formulas and calculators to figure out just how many marbles are in jar and how long a Slinky is when it's stretched out.
The human body made an appearance in a number of games, including “The Fascinating Human Body” where students identified organs and organized them in a colorful human body outline.
The egg drop was a challenge to construct a landing pad of straws and tape to buffer the fall of a raw egg.
Armed with 20 plastic straws and 3 feet of tape, Sydney Osan, 10, of Apollo was one of the students who dropped her egg 7 feet without breaking it.
“I'm keeping this egg,” she said.
Mary Ann Thomas is a staff writer for Trib Total Media.
