Over 1K students compete at Apega Science Olympics

1100 students from Calgary and surrounding communities use their engineering and geoscience skills to find solutions to real-world problems.

The Olympic Oval served as the backdrop Saturday for an event designed to inspire the next generation of Alberta problem solvers -- the Apega Science Olympics.

More than 1,100 students from Grades 1 through 12 from Calgary and the surrounding area participated in a sports-themed competition.

The students were challenged to find solutions for real-world problems using their engineering and geoscience skills.

The event also celebrates team work and creativity.

Some of the challenges included creating a device that enables someone with colour-vision deficiency to differentiate jersey colours. Another featured designing and building a freestyle ski run, while another involved developing a small-scale automatic soccer ball-throwing machine.

Students also received mystery challenges to solve during the event.

“One of my favorite things is walking around and seeing all the prototypes,” said Apega K-12 outreach coordinator Chelsea Brown, “so when we design the challenges, I think sometimes you can’t help but have an idea in your mind of how you might solve it, and so it’s really exciting, is to see how the students’ ideas have differed from your own, and what really great ideas they’ve come up with.”

Brown said the event allowed students to put their classroom learning to practical use.

“These kind of events are a really neat opportunity for students to really take what they’re learning in the classroom a step further,” she said. “All of our challenges do underscore the Alberta curriculum, so it does follow that, but it kind of gives them that opportunity for extension, where they can really explore and discover something beyond the classroom.

“It’s basically just introducing problems that we face in society,” said Ryan Borowiecki, a geoscientist and volunteer, “and framing it in ways that you know we can start looking at solving those problems in a one-hour time frame,”

One participant said the opportunity to get a taste of dealing with real world problems was cool.

“It’s really fun to kind of learn what it’s like to be an engineer,” said participant Anthony Pinto, “especially with electricals.

“Before I started this, I had no idea how to use any electric component,” Pinto said. “Growing here and just having the challenge, like they’ve slowly stepped up in difficulty, which has kind of expanded me slowly, and I really like what I’ve done here.”

This is the 40th year for the Agepa Science Olympics.