On February 15, MGA's Department of Natural Sciences hosted a regional tournament of the Georgia Science Olympiad. Twenty-three teams of high school students from across the state competed in a variety of STEAM based events.
The tournament was organized by Dr. Lawrence Camarota, Dr. Upendra Adhikari, and Dr. Shauna Mein. Faculty from the departments of Natural Sciences and Aviation created and judged our events. Staff from administration and facilities assisted with the logistics of the tournament. Many student volunteers assisted with the judges, as well as providing guidance to the visiting schools.
During the competition, the competing high school teams built wind turbines to produce electricity, towers that could stand a thousand times their own weight, helicopters, and trebuchets. They navigated mazes with robots and with lasers. They completed tests of knowledge of astronomy, biology, chemistry, and physics. Overall, the teams competed in 21 different events.
In the end, eight teams that competed at Middle Georgia State University scored well enough in all of their events to continue on to the state level. These teams will go to the Georgia Tech campus on March 29 to compete with 24 other teams in the state tournament, where they will perform similar feats with a higher degree of precision and difficulty. After that, three teams from the state tournament will be selected to represent Georgia in the National Science Olympiad tournament that will take place May 23-24.
The Department appreciates all of the hard work that faculty and staff put into the event!