Science Olympiad

Science Olympiad is an American team competition in which students compete in 'events' pertaining to various scientific disciplines, including earth science, biology, chemistry, physics, and engineering. Over 7,300 middle school and high school teams from 50 U.S. states compete each year, but only 49 states host competitions, with the exception being Vermont. There are multiple levels of competition: invitational, regional, state, and national. Some states or private groups offer 'invitational' tournaments as practice for regional and state competitions. Teams which excel at the regional competitions advance to the state level, and then to the national level. Winners later receive several kinds of awards from medals to trophies and plaques. The program for Elementary-age students is less common and consistent. Schools have flexibility to implement the program to meet their needs. Some communities host competitive Elementary tournaments.

Science Olympiad is not associated with the International Science Olympiads, which follow a completely different format and set of rules.

The first recorded Science Olympiad was held on Saturday, November 23, 1974 at St. Andrews Presbyterian College in Laurinburg, North Carolina. Dr. Barnes and Dr. David Wetmore were the originators of this event. Fifteen schools from North and South Carolina participated in this event. It was a day-long affair, with competitions and demonstrations for high school students in the areas of biology, chemistry, and physics. There were four event periods during this day and each event period had one fun event (like beaker race or paper airplane), one demonstration (like glassblowing and holography), and one serious event (like periodic table quiz or Science Bowl). An article by David Wetmore was published in the Journal of Chemical Education in January 1978 documenting the success of recruiting students through Science Olympiad. St. Andrews Presbyterian College continues to host a Science Olympiad tournament to this day. Mr. John C. "Jack" Cairns was a teacher at Dover High School in Delaware when he learned about the Science Olympiad tournament in North Carolina. He shared this information with Dr. Douglas R. Macbeth, the Delaware State Science Supervisor. Mr. Cairns was appointed to a steering committee to organize the first Science Olympiad in Delaware which took place at Delaware State University in the Spring of 1977. A write-up in The Science Teacher of December 1977 caught the attention of Dr. Gerard Putz, who proposed that the program be expanded throughout the United States. After competition tests in Michigan at the Lawrence Institute of Technology and Oakland University in 1983 and 1984, Putz and Delaware director John Cairns took their plan for a national competition to the National Science Teachers Conference in Boston. The first National Tournament was attended by representatives of 17 states, held at Michigan State University in 1985. Since then, the program has expanded greatly, with 60 teams present in each division at the National Tournament. In 2012, a Global Ambassador Team from Japan was invited to attend the national tournament at the University of Central Florida. Japan continues to send a team, as of the 2016 National Tournament.

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