Members of LHS’ Science Olympiad team competed in the club’s annual competition at Kellenberg Memorial High School on Saturday, Feb. 2. Of the 39 teams in attendance, Lynbrook’s A team placed 11th, in one of its best performances in years. The team, composed of the brightest seniors, juniors, and sophomores, medalled in six of 24 events.

The Science Olympiads club, advised by Science Teachers Kevin Tranchina and Carol-Ann Winans, allows students to compete against schools across Long Island. At the contest, they are tested in various areas of science ranging from earth science, biology, chemistry, and physics to engineering. Events require students to take written exams on their topic, perform experiments, or build models prior to the competition for judging. The club is most unique in that it fosters an environment where students can become familiar in more niche realms of science through hands-on experience. Often students learn about topics that are not covered in school. Senior Sam Cohen stated, “I learned how to encrypt and decrypt text using a few different mathematical methods for an event called Codebusters, and it was a lot of fun.” Junior Maria Russotti added, “In my event, Protein Modeling, we created a physical model of a specific protein using computer programming, and we learned so much about genome editing and molecular biology in the process.”

To prepare for their rigorous events, students meet up once a week for several months to study and build their devices. Cohen stated, “This year, we had a lot of dedicated and talented seniors who spent the time to prepare for their events properly. It was also a great help that we had enough people to submit to almost all of the events.” The students’ commitment after school was worthwhile due to their success at the competition. Lynbrook’s A team placed within the top eight amongst the opposing schools in events including Circuit Lab, Designer Genes, Mission Possible, Write It Do It, Science Quiz Bowl, and even finished in third place in Thermodynamics. Seniors Kaylie Hausknecht, Sam Cohen, Juliana Condoleo, Jason Shao, Danny Neri, and Matt Venezia were among several seniors who received medals.

The day of the competition was all-the-more exciting after the Science Quiz Bowl group– consisting of Hausknecht, Condoleo, and Venezia– was one of six teams that competed in front of a live audience of students and faculty where they raced to answer science trivia. Russotti stated, “We all were so excited watching Juliana, Kaylie, and Matt compete in quiz bowl and would loudly cheer when they answered correctly. It really showed our school pride and how genuinely happy we were to see our teammates succeed.”

In addition to achieving success at the competition, students also enjoyed themselves. Cohen stated, “Science Olympiad is a really fun time. There is really something for everyone.” While many students may feel averse towards joining a club that is heavily focused in science, Science Olympiads’ diverse selection of events can appeal to anyone. Some popular events include Fermi Questions, where students must take an educated guess of a quantity through mathematical equations, and Write It Do It, where one student writes instructions of his/her observation of a structure and their partner must recreate it based only on his/her description. Junior Arpie Bakhshian adds, “People usually think that science is boring, but many events at Science Olympiad are extremely interesting and fun to do. For example, for Sound of Music, Juliana and I built a home-made pan-flute and played a scale to the judges.” As Cohen stated, “I encourage anyone who has an interest in academics to join!”