The Arcadia High School (AHS) Science Bowl team participated in the MIT Science Bowl Invitational on Nov. 6. This year, AHS placed 3rd out of 48 teams in the nation. 

Congratulations to the Science Bowl team, along with notable mentions: Jeshwanth Monath, Sonia Zhang, Brian Lam, Xing Liu, and Ophelia Lu!

The National Science Bowl (NSB) is a highly competitive academic event among teams of high school and middle school students. They compete in a fast-paced verbal forum to solve technical problems and questions in science and math. There are four students on each team, an alternate student, and a coach. 

Because of COVID-19, the competition took an online format this year. MIT organized and sent out a set of Zoom links to rotate teams around. They also organized an online system for the buzzer. Senior Ophelia Lu explained that the team communicated through Discord when they weren’t playing. 

“The event was pretty well organized,” said Lu. “Our coach received timely email[s] with new Zoom links. I would say it was quite smooth for us. The buzzer system was good most of the time too.” 

During the competition, a wide variety of difficult questions were asked. Since each person studying each topic would be  too difficult, the team divided and conquered. Each student specialized in various subjects and subtopics. 

“We specialize in different subjects but there are overlaps. Within each subject we have subtopics too,” said Lu. “For example, one bio specialist can be especially skilled in genetics while another is in anatomy. But as bio specialists we all know those subtopics at least a bit, it’s just how much we know about each subtopic.”

Each individual on the team has a different strategy to study. Junior Brian Lam, for example, studies off of different websites. Lu finds that the textbook on different subjects helps the most. Lu said her specialties are biology, chemistry, energy, earth, and space. Some of the other topics include math, physics, and astronomy. In addition to individual studying, the team also practices together Fridays after school and Sunday mornings with old science bowl questions from the DOE website.

The team’s hard work for this difficult competition really paid off. Last year, the team made it into double elimination with 16 teams remaining. This elimination produces first, second, third, and fourth-place teams. The competition is out of teams and not schools because some schools send multiple teams.

The top two high school teams receive trips to one of the National Parks. The top three middle and high school teams receive a trophy, medals, and photographs with officials of the Department of Energy. The top 16 middle and high schools also earn a check for their school’s science departments. As their score increases, so does the amount of prize money. 

Photo courtesy of MIT SCIENCE BOWL