Science Club Challenges Teachers

The Science Club, breaking from a traditional Science Bowl format, hoped to organize their own competition, challenging teachers rather than other students.

The Science Club usually competes in Science Bowls, competitions sponsored by the Department of Energy, involving Jeopardy-style quizzes on subjects like Chemistry, Biology, Physics, Mathematics, Energy, Earth, and Space Science.

Mark Lindblad said, “We had so much fun with this that we’re organizing a faculty challenge, so we are challenging our teachers here, saying, ‘We can beat you to the buzzer!’ Hopefully we won’t lose like crazy, but I think we’ll do well. The teachers may know more, but we know more things faster, so that’s what we’re going for.”

However, schedule complications arose. Team captain senior Andrew Zerkle said, “We were planning on having a faculty match… I tried to schedule it for Thursday the 25, but there’s some sort of meeting after school, but the teachers are bad at communicating, so, to be determined.”

Club member junior Vasily Tremsin explained, “Teachers have busy schedules, and this would take an hour after school.” He believes since the Bowl was tentatively scheduled to be in late May, there was conflict with finals week that lead to its cancellation.

Although disappointed, Tremsin said the club understood why the teachers couldn’t participate. Instead, they plan to do the same thing next year, only earlier to accommodate faculty plans.

This year the Science Club has gone through a few changes, like the removal of a Computer Science category and a change in teacher advisers from veteran AP Chemistry teacher Rachel Eaton to Biotechnology teacher Jay Chugh.