Newark Students To Represent Bay Area In Northern California Science Olympiad

For the second year in a row, students with in Newark recently placed first at the Bay Area Regional Science Olympiad for Div. B.

But the challenge isn’t over. These student scientists will take on more teams when they represent the Bay Area at the NorCal Science Olympiad 2012 State Tournament at Visalia on April 14.

The team – known as the Challenger Ardenwood Scientists – consists of 15 students.

• Shrey Kapoor, 8th Grade
• Aniruddh Mandalapu, 8th Grade
• Vivek Bharadwaj, 8th Grade
• Omkar Salpekar, 8th Grade
• Ishan Kaul, 8th Grade
• Ashvita Ramesh, 8th Grade
• Vidya Pingali, 8th Grade
• Ankita Joshi, 7th Grade
• Sujay Kazi, 7th Grade
• Ellie Wang, 7th Grade
• Jay Desai, 7th Grade
• Anay Limaye, 7th Grade
• Harshayu Girase, 7th Grade
• Meera Ganesh, 7th Grade
• Puja Nair, 7th Grade

Head Coach Alpana Kapoor said the key to the team’s success was centered around collaboration. Kapoor said:

“This team of 15 kids participated in 23 different scientific events. Each event had two kids. The amazing thing was the excellent team-work shown by all kids that they were placed in top five positions in 18 events out of 23, which is kind of very difficult to achieve. All events covered different branches of science like life science, physics, engineering, chemistry and building challenges.”

More from Kapoor:

The purpose of Bay Area Science Olympiad is to improve the quality of science education through competitions similar to sporting events. 

Just as students are motivated to compete in various sporting activities, students compete as a team against other schools in 23 different events that range the spectrum of science subjects. BARSO hosts the regional competition for public, private, or home schools in Marin, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Cruz, Monterey, San Benito, Santa Clara, Alameda, and Contra Costa counties.

The 2011 competition site was Foothills High School in Pleasanton.

The event took place on Feb 18. Eighteen Teams from Various Middle Schools participated all across Bay Area. Out of all Newark middle schools students of – Team Number B-27, Team Name - “Challenger Ardenwood Scientists” seventh and eighth grade students outshined and earned FIRST place at the Bay Area Regional Science Olympiad.

The Ardenwood Scientists team earned top marks at the regional competition hosted by Foothill High School in Pleasanton that challenged student’s science and engineering skills.

Students did everything from designing and constructing a Bottle Rocket, Mouse Trap Vehicle and Storm the Castle and several others. The student teams performed several experiments and competed in several other practical and theory events.             

Learn more about the Bay Area Regional Science Olympiad by clicking here to visit the website. Visit the Northern California Science Olympiad website at http://www.norcalscienceolympiad.com.

Information provided by Alpana Kapoor.