BEDFORD, N.Y. - Last month, Fox Lane High School’s Science Olympiad Team placed eighth at the Lower Hudson Valley Regional Tournament. The 40 students that attended the event competed against some of the best young minds in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) in our area.
Fox Lane came out on top in two events.
David Matz and Max Bly earned first place in an event called Material Science. It was a hybrid event where the students demonstrated understanding by building a strong concrete puck and testing to see how it performed under various impact conditions. They were also challenged by an exam that tested their knowledge of the properties and characteristics of metals, ceramics, polymers, and composite materials, with a focus on material characterization techniques, intermolecular forces and surface chemistry.
Another first-place finish was proudly earned by Jasper Sizer and Hades Laskaris in an event that tested their understanding of Ecology. Jasper and Hades answered questions involving content knowledge and process skills in the area of ecology and adaptations in featured North American biomes.
After earning two first-place finishes, the success of the team continued!
In Entomology, the team earned second place thanks to Felix Suiu and Nick DeMeo in an amazing finish — with Nick competing for the first time this year. They were expected to identify insects and select immature insects by order and family, answer questions about insects, and use or construct a dichotomous key.
The success kept going as Meghana Uday and Zephyr Kimmel achieved a third-place finish in Bungee Drop. This team had to create an elastic cord to stop the fall of an object. Their object fell within nine cm of their target distance. The accuracy for this group was topped by only two schools.
Rounding out Fox Lane’s top-five finishers were Gabe Wierzchowski and Maddie Stone for their hard-earned finish in Disease Detectives.
In total, 15 students from Fox Lane were recognized with at least one top ten finish: Max Bly, Emma Chang, Zach Cohen, Nick DeMeo, Caleb Hollander, Rebecca Kolb, Hades Laskaris, David Matz, Zephyr Kimmel, Max Rubinstein, Jasper Sizer, Maddie Stone, Felix Suiu, Meghana Uday, and Gabe Wierzchowski. This distinction comes with a medal to commemorate their strong performance and bragging rights for being one of the best in their event when competing with other top schools from Westchester, Putnam and Rockland Counties.
Special recognition goes out to the builders who worked extra hard to engineer and build a variety of competitive devices. These students voluntarily signed up for an extremely challenging task and worked many hours prior to competition day to be prepared: Gustavo Aguirre, Max Bly, Zach Cohen, Jack Cristiano, Jacques Desforges, Marc Desforges, Spencer Eigel, Tyler Nakajima Graham, Jacob Green, Zephyr Kimmel, Hades Laskaris, Sam Liu, Jackson Lubinsky, David Matz, Curt McConnell, Jason Ramon, Max Rubinstein, Jasper Sizer, Evan Stackle, Felix Suiu, Meghana Uday, Aidan Weise and Isabella Zapsky.
The team is very grateful for the support given to them in the form of a grant from FLHSA. This grant allowed students to purchase and get reimbursed for money spent on construction materials. The grant was greatly appreciated and put to good use in the building of custom bungee cords, helicopters, cement pucks, towers, electric cars, robots, wind propellers and air-powered launchers.
Fox Lane Science Olympians who attended: Rachel Agnello, Gustavo Aguirre, Anushka Arvind, Max Bly, Emma Chang, Justin Cohen, Zach Cohen, Jack Cristiano, Ashley Del Cid, Alexa DeMartino, Nicholas DeMeo, Jacques Desforges, Marc Desforges, Natalie Desforges, Olivia Eckert, Spencer Eigel, Jacob Green, Caleb Hollander, Zephyr Kimmel, Rebecca Kolb, Tess Larsen, Hades Laskaris, Sam Liu, Anthony Lopez Mejia, Jackson Lubinsky, James MacDonald, David Matz, Curt McConnell, Sophie Nahmias, Tyler Nakajima Graham, Jayson Ramon, James Rodriguez, Max Rubinstein, Xavier Santos, Saba Shahidi, Jasper Sizer, Evan Stackle, Maddie Stone, Felix Suiu, Meghana Uday, Aidan Weise, Gabe Wierzchowski, and Isabella Zapsley. Myer Simkhai attended the all-day event, assisting as a third judge for the tower contest.
Advisers: Mr. Neumann and Mr. Ludwig
Article courtesy of Bedford Central School District.
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