On April 18, the North Science Olympiad team traveled to the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign to compete in the state tournament. Juniors Atharv Sood and Talha Hasan placed 5th in their chemistry lab event.
Sood and Hasan were surprised at their win.
“Because we knew that we hadn’t finished the whole test, and we were expecting the competition to be really difficult, just because of the really strong schools that we saw there, we weren’t really expecting to do really well,” said Sood. “We really put everything we knew into the test, but it was still surprising because the test was really hard.”
The two worked as teammates in the chemistry lab event, in which participants perform a lab and are tested on their related knowledge. The teams are then scored by accuracy and place accordingly.
“They have you put on your protective gear, your lab coat, your goggles, and then you’re just at this lab bench. You’re standing the whole time. There’s like a pile of chemicals on the desk, and then a test,” said Hasan. “There’s a multiple choice section, a short answer section, and then the actual lab part of it.”
To prepare for the event, students are given a list of potential topics the test and lab might include, which Sood and Hasan worked with all year long. They note their time in AP Chemistry also aided their performance.
“[There] was a list of topics that could be on there, … so I guess all year we kind of been working on that, but we’re both in AP Chem, so a lot of those topics we’ve seen before, and just through class we knew a lot of this stuff that we needed,” said Hasan.
Although they will not know what they are competing in for their senior season until next year, Hasan wants to try the chemistry lab event again.
“I don’t really know what I’m gonna do next year, but I kind of like this one, and I feel like I’m pretty strong chemistry. So we’ll probably try to put it back next year,” said Hasan.
Both Hasan and Sood encourage students that may be interested in participating in Science Olympiad or competing in events like this to consider joining next year.
“If [students] want to join, they are always welcome to come next year, in room 135 on Friday afternoons,” said Hasan.
