The 2006 Science Olympiad
(Strength through Design)

The Academy of Science and Technology, IS 131 (Bronx), uses math and science to solve real-world problems.

By Francis Osei, Salvadori Consultant • For a PDF version of this article, click here. • Posted December 27, 2006

December 20, 2006: Ms. Heyward and the entire 7th grade are ready to do battle. Well, "battle" of an intellectual sort, as teams of students prepare themselves to square off in the 2006 Science Olympiad.

The idea of the Olympiad is to get the students to use math and science skills taught in class to solve real-world problems and develop critical thinking skills while doing so. Just as important, the Olympiad encourages the teacher to trust and test her students' retention and application of material taught in the classroom.

Francis Osei rallies the troops.

I begin to rally the troops at the Olympiad.

Building the spans from balsa wood.

Glue guns and good cheer.

The 2006 Science Olympiad is structured around competitive groups of students who design, plan, and build spans from balsa dowels in order to test their structural integrity. For 45 minutes the students huddled and built, testing out theories with glue guns and good cheer -- and all without any coaching from the adults in the room, or which there were quite a few: Salvadori board member Frank Lombardi (of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey), Principal Rudolph Rupnarain, Dr. Leonisa Ardizzone of the Salvadori Center, and Dov Rokeach, the superintendent of District 8, to name a few.

Then came the real test: the bricks. The deal was that each span would be tested by loading on bricks until the span collapsed. The team that built the span that held the greatest numbers of brick were the Conquerors of the Science Olympiad! (Drum roll, please!)

The span holds the bricks as the crowd watches - and prays.
If you thought the building session was intense, you should have seen the span tests! A couple of kids prayed, some hid their faces because they couldn’t bear to to see while the rest watched as one by one each span failed -- which didn't keep them from cheering for each other. Even the adults stopped being adults for a little while and did some partisan cheering of their own!

In the celebration afterwards, Superintendent Rokeach was "stunned" at the original thinking of the student and hoped that the competition could be held for the entire district next year. Other speakers were Dr. Ardizzone and Mr. Ed Leotta, assistant principal. Dr. Ardizzone praised the students for their maturity and capabilities, and advised them to use those skills throughout their lives.

The Salvadori Center logo

Mission of the Salvadori Center: Our founder, Mario Salvadori, a world-renowned structural engineer, believed that the built environment held all the knowledge that a person needed to be an intelligent and active member of the community. What teachers need to make this knowledge available to their students are tools with which they can “unpack” the knowledge embedded in the built environment.

The Salvadori Center gives these tools to teachers and students through a pedagogy grounded in what it calls “project-based, hands-on/minds-on activities” that employ the principles of architecture, engineering, and the design process. Through this method, teachers and their students can unlock the math, science, art, and humanities embodied in the structures and systems that surround them.