Stryke Force Students Compete in Science Olympiad

Science Olympiad is a Nationwide scholastic program where team members compete against other teams in 23 events from written exam events like anatomy and physiology, to hands-on events like circuit lab, as well as engineering build events. Since Stryke Force is a community team, many of us attend different schools, or are homeschooled. Some of us competed against each other, creating an exciting competition. Throughout the preparations for this season, we had many events to work on prior to the regional tournament. A few of the events that the Stryke Force students competed in involved engineering devices that are capable of performing given tasks. There is no doubt that the vast amount of knowledge gained from robotics helped us excel in these events. In fact, all four engineering events were won by Stryke Force students either from Portage Central or Portage Northern.

The engineering events that we spent a significant amount of time on were Mission Possible (a chain reaction machine), Wright Stuff (a balsa wood airplane powered by a rubber band that flew for 2 minutes and 52 seconds, which is a whole minute longer than the second place team), a mousetrap vehicle that travels in two directions, and Boomilever (a lightweight wooden structure) that held over 1000 times its own weight. Both the mission possible device and mousetrap vehicle were designed in CAD, and were constructed from many 3D printed parts. Because of the information we had gathered in Stryke Force about the importance of material selection, both the plane and boomilever were carefully thought out in order to maximize efficiency. Throughout our whole experience in robotics, we have been able to learn the intricacies of design and manufacturing in a way that we can effectively apply these skills both inside and outside of the Stryke Force Team