Acton-Boxborough Science Team to Compete in National Competition

The Acton-Boxborough Science Team is heading to the University of Wisconsin to compete in the National Science Olympiad May 19 – 22. The team placed first on Saturday, March 19, at the Massachusetts Science Olympiad at Framingham State University. The team of 20 students, coached by Biology teacher, Brian Dempsey, competed against 41 other teams in the state Olympiad and took home first place in 10 events.

What is the Science Olympiad?

The Science Olympiad, a nonprofit organization interesting in exciting k-12 students in science, has designed the National Science Olympiad as a way to teach students to become better problem solvers in a competitive setting by encouraging cooperative team scenarios. Team members work together to build, engineer and prepare each other to compete in standardized tests in subjects such as astronomy, ecology and forensics to name a few.

Acton-Boxborough Senior, Prateek Sahay, one of the Team Officers for the AB Science Team and , is very excited to compete this year in Wisconsin; as this will be his final Science Olympiad competition. In 2010, the AB Science Team competed in the National Science Olympiad in Illinois.

“The event is a lot of fun and I am really looking forward to going back,” said Sahay. “Competition aside, there is a lot of downtime where all of the students from other teams can just hang out on campus and get to know each other better.”

Sahay is more interested in the building an engineering competitions at the Olympiad and competes in an event called Sumo-Bots.

Sumo-Bots:

Described as one of the more exciting events at the Framingham State Olympiad by Sahay, students build electronic robots controlled by a remote, that are placed in a ring and the object is for the teams to push each others robot out of the ring; winner stays on. The AB Science Team placed 4^th.

“The event is great,” said Sahay. “A lot of people come by after most of the events are all over and everyone just kind of cheers you on.”

According to Sahay, the National competition is a lot tougher. Last year, the team had to deal with the misfortune of a shipping crisis, where they had to stay up all night fixing their robot that was damaged during the shipping process.

The rules are much like the newly incorporated anti-bullying regulations put in place at most schools - the robots are not allowed to beat-up on each other, i.e., robots cannot have a sledgehammer attached, trying to destroy the other robot.

“The rules are that you can’t have sharp points, flamethrowers or dramatic cannons or anything like that,” said Sahay, laughing at the idea.

Prateek's mother, Sunanda Sahay, is proud of Prateek's motivation for science and engineering and can recall the time when she knew Prateek was going to be interested in science.

“He was a born engineer, said Sunanda. “I remember a small incident when he was really young – we had a flashlight in our room and he turned the batteries around and took apart some other pieces to try and figure out if it was still going to work. He was really big into Lego’s, too.”

Fundraising for the trip:

The AB Science Team has estimated that they will have to raise 8,000 dollars for the entire trip. The team is thinking of conducting an off-campus carwash and a bake sale/movie night (dates and locations TBA). The team is looking into being sponsored and has so far received confirmation that the Chinese Language School wants to help donate along with the Acton P.I.P. 

If anyone is interested in donating funds to the Acton-Boxborough Science Team, contact coach, Brain Dempsey.

“Mr. Dempsey is a really cool guy,” said Prateek. “He knows a lot about organization and he keeps the team in order for everything. I am really glad he is our coach.”