From the most destructive form of precipitation (hail) to the United States’ No. 1 fruit (bananas) and the chemical element denoted by the symbol Hg (mercury), three students from University Park Elementary School in Hyattsville fired off answer after answer Tuesday, running away with two match-ups in the Prince George’s County Science Bowl contests.
“One of the questions was pretty funny,” said sixth-grader Charlie Dawson, explaining good luck the team had before the competition. “A cupcake [was decorated with] the symbol Hg, so we asked [team sponsor Geoff] Favero, and he told me mercury.”
With just a bit of luck, a lot of knowledge, and fingers quick to buzz in, Charlie, fellow sixth-grader Madeleine Wonneberger, and fifth-grader Surya Pukazhenthi put University Park Elementary’s team in the April 17 semifinals in the elementary school competition.
“They worked hard,” said Favero, a sixth-grade science teacher at the school. “A lot of teachers [at University Park Elementary] aren’t afraid to get their hands dirty and teach real science.”
The Science Bowl, in its 26th year, is the Prince George’s County school system’s televised academic competition that offers 30 questions from six categories melding science, history and current events, including politics, books and natural disasters.
For Tuesday’s contests, Science Bowl creator and host Dave Zahren turned President Obama’s State of the Union speech, the newly released movie “Big Miracle,” and even the popular cartoon character SpongeBob SquarePants into questions.
“That’s really the whole point of the show: to foster scientific literacy and to let kids see that what they’re studying in an academic context is all around them,” said Zahren, who encourages participants to read the special science sections that appear weekly in national newspapers.
University Park Elementary steamrolled Upper Marlboro’s Mattaponi Elementary School in the afternoon’s first contest, 405-100, but Michael Forrest, a sixth-grader at Mattaponi, was good-natured afterward.
“I like the fun of competing against other schools,” said Michael, an 11-year-old from Upper Marlboro. “I like anything that has to do with engineering.”
Lanham’s Magnolia Elementary School confronted questions about typhoons, plankton and the chemical used to embalm former President Abraham Lincoln — arsenic — before squeaking out a 240-225 victory over Bowie’s Northview Elementary to advance and face University Park in the second round of the day.
Then Magnolia Elementary’s team — made up of sixth-graders Faheel Kamran, Scott Mason and Sebastian Peters — kept pace with University Park Elementary, which has won the Science Bowl championship four times since 1986, until Charlie voiced a streak of correct answers for his team: “mollusk,” “migration,” “maggots,” “black holes.”
University Park trounced Magnolia, 340-115.
“I think back to when I was their age, and I’m amazed,” said Ken Lavish, a Science Bowl judge and a volunteer at the Patuxent Research Refuge in Laurel.
“We need more science in our learning, because that’s where all the important discoveries are made, inventions, innovations.”
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