The All Science Challenge!!

After months of preparation, on Thursday, May 26th, the U of G hosted its first ever All Science Challenge!! Ten teams of students in grades 6-8 from five area schools competed for the top prize! All of the volunteers, teachers, and spectators were absolutely blown away by the questions that the students were answering! The kids worked their brains off to prepare for the big day, and their hard work really paid off! All of the competitors, whether they won or not, can be extremely proud of how they performed.

A HUGE thank you is owed to a huge number of people! In no particular order:

• Thank you to our fantastic sponsors for providing many of the materials and prizes!!
• Thank you to the national office of Let's Talk Science for their organization and support!
• Thank you to all of the volunteers who worked so hard to make the big day a success!
• Thank you to all of the teachers who worked overtime to help their students prepare!
• Thank you to the friends and families of the competitors for their support, both in advance and on the big day!
• And, of course, thank you to the competitors, who spent many hours working to study the All Science Challenge handbook!

To see all the photos that were taken on the big day, check out our Picasa album. Keep reading to hear about the big day!



The competition was fierce: in the first round, the students answered science questions as a team.  In the second round, teams had to nominate one of their members to attempt each question.

In the third round, the students competed in a top-secret hands-on challenge. They were kept in the dark about what they would need to build until the moment they arrived in their challenge rooms. The students were given 30 minutes to build something that would allow an egg to survive a 2.5 m drop! There was some serious creativity... and a few casualties ;)

Finally, the three teams with the highest scores competed in the final elimination round.  The first-place team won after the other two teams were knocked out on a single question!
This year's winners of the top prize were....

Team Rachel Squared and Connor from  JD Hogarth!!

After battling it out in sudden-death competition, second prize went to...

The Wildcats from Wallace Public School!!

And third place went to...

The Ninjaz from JD Hogarth!

 There was also a Spirit award, which was given to the team that showed the best teamwork.  The winners were..

The Bears, from Brant Avenue Public School!

The volunteers reached a unanimous decision that the Brant Bears really did themselves and their school proud :)

Finally, because there was an extra prize left (since the winning team had only 3 members), we had ANOTHER round of sudden-death competition to win the extra prize!

The winner was a superstar from Spruce Ridge Public School: Sydney, from team Spontaneous Combustions!

Congratulations to all of the competitors, especially the winners! I don't know about all of you, but I can't wait until next year's competition!