“Your job is to build a filter as cheaply as possible, that works the best.” Those were the initial instructions from teacher Andrea Attridge, at the annual Science Olympics, held at St. Marie of the Incarnation Catholic School on Friday.
Teams of students from St. Angela Merici, St. Charles School, St. Jean de Brebeuf, St. Marie of the Incarnation and St. Teresa of Calcutta competed, by taking on challenges that required them to use not only their science and engineering skills, but mathematics, and business.
This was the third year for the Olympics, an all-day event hosted by St. Marie. The teams faced a total of six challenges, in the course of the day – including the filter challenge.
Each team was provided with a beaker of muddy water, a funnel, and a stand – and had to design their filter using materials available from the main “store”. Those materials included gauze, paper towels, tissues, saran wrap – each with a different, and admittedly inflated price.
The goal: to produce a vial of “Grade A”, nearly pure effluent, at the lowest possible cost, to be determined by a panel of independent judges.
There was an extra element to the challenge: the students had only half an hour to get the job done.
Attridge, a Grade 8 teacher at St. Marie, is passionate about the Science Olympics, and the level of learning that it involves. It engages not only the Catholic Elementary schools in Bradford, but also “the science department and older students at Holy Trinity Catholic High School,” she said, who would be coming in later in the day, to provide demonstrations of science to the students.
This is the fourth year in a row that Attridge has organized the event.
"It's a fun day," she noted. "And I get to just geek out on science all day," she said with a laugh.
The teams, which are comprised of grade 7 and 8 students, are selected to represent their school based on not only their grades but their general level of interest in the subject of science and their team work skills.
"We look at a number of things, like problem solving ability, team work, and good interest in science," explained grade 7 teacher and coach for the St. Jean de Brebeuf team, David Twigg.
"They all work really well together, they support each other, they're good thinkers outside of the box," Twigg noted about his team.
Twig added that it is a great way for students who are not athletically inclined to be able to participate in a team sport as well.
"It's another way to be a part of the team," he said.
Each competition – the filter challenge, building a freestanding bridge, coding with robots, an interactive quiz on Kahoot – earned teams a set number of points. It was a close competition, but it was St. Angela Merici who came out on top. St. Marie of the Incarnation took second place and St. Charles came in third. St. Jean de Brebeuf and St. Teresa of Calcutta both took honourable mentions.
-with files from Natasha Philpott