By Natalie Koch
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Members of the MHS Science Club geared up for the annual State Science Bowl competition held at Honolulu Community College on Jan. 31. Mililani students placed seventh against 20 schools across the state to test their knowledge in biology, chemistry, physics, anatomy and physiology.
“Mililani typically always has a good team and people know it, and they don’t want to go against us because we’re kind of the wild card,” stated Science Club adviser, Matthew Capps. “They expect Iolani to do well, they expect Punahou to do well, they’re spending 20 grand a year to go to school and they’ve been recruited from all over the place, so for a public school to come in and do as well as we do, I think it’s a pretty cool testament, first of how awesome our students are, and how awesome our teachers are.”
The Science Bowl competition closely resembles a game of Jeopardy and consists of two teams from each school, moderators, a point system and buzzers. “It’s pretty hard to prepare for it, just because of how random the questions are. So it’s not like something you would see on an AP test,” explained second year competitor Senior Vivian Fang.
Due to the difficulty and arbitrarity of the questions, the competitors put in months of practice in preparation. “We have this binder of old Science Bowl questions, and what we do is basically every Tuesday and Thursday for the past month and a half we’ve been coming in to just practice with the buzzer and having these random questions read out to us,” explained Fang. “One of the biggest things that you have to prepare for for the Science Bowl is how to press the buzzer, as silly as it sounds, because it can be very nerve-wracking when you’re up against another team.”
Despite their thorough preparation, the students entered the competition aware that it held a certain level of unpredictably. “I think overall I would rank us as one of the top three or four every year, it just depends on you know, if the momentum shifts at all. You could lose a match even against an opponent that’s not as good as you, or if the momentum shifts you could easily beat an opponent that’s better than you,” Capps explained.
The students are assigned to specialize in certain categories among the topics presented to them. “That’s kind of what we like to have our team composition to be so that you can answer the questions faster, because it’s harder to know everything than it is to have everyone divided into certain specialties,” said Fang.
As with any competition, there is always more to be gained than just the victory. “We just like to go to the competitions because it kind of gives the students recognition,” Capps said. “You can always put that on a resume, it teaches them a little bit about competition, especially if they’re not sports kids. If you’ve never played sports then you’ve never faced competition and it’s kind of a neat way to go through it.”
The competitors didn’t place as well as they hoped this year, but didn’t let that tarnish their experience. “I think it’s a good opportunity for STEM. Like, it’s a lot of physics and a lot of math and stuff as well as the science,” said second year Science Club member Junior John Carson. “There’s a lot of professors too like even if it’s just from (Honolulu Community College) so you can familiarize yourself with the campus and then like familiarize yourself with the professors.”
Likewise, the Science Bowl has given its competitors a bit of useful day to day knowledge. “I want to be an engineer so if anything this helps you learn how to study and how to get put on the spot, just because for some people it is very hard to, I guess speak loudly,” said Fang.
With another year of competitions behind the Science Club, its members are grateful for the opportunity to once again showcase their love for science.