The arm was raised, the suspense was built and the egg was dropped. When it landed on the floor without breaking, the crowd of more than 300 students, parents and teachers cheered loudly. The Presentation School’s science team, competing for the first time in the Sonoma County Science Olympiad Competition, had managed to pull off a second place finish among 24 schools.
Presentation’s team of 15 fourth, fifth and sixth graders placed second in two of the events. Isabel Garon and Maria Fernandez finished second in the “egg drop” at 8.5 feet. Kirsten Couchman and Christian Isbrandtsen also earned runner-up honors in “barge building,” constructing an aluminum foil barge which held 89 pennies.
The Presentation team consisted of: Ryan Angeloni, Hanna Porter, Janae Lewis, Owen Walthard, Erica Carmona, Maria Fernandez, Jack Greenberg, Kirsten Kelly, Gracie Bundschu, Kirsten Couchman, Isabel Garon and Cristian Isbrandsten. Science teachers Jamie Mitchell and Gayle Gurule coached the team, which met weekly after school in the months leading up to the event. Presentation was the only school in Sonoma Valley to compete in the local Science Olympiad this year.
“It was wonderful to be able to see them make such progress with an 8.5 foot drop in the competition in front of a large, enthusiastic audience,” said Mitchell. “It was exciting to see our team construct the egg container out of only 10 pieces of paper and a meter of tape. In practice, we had only achieved a successful drop at 6.5 feet.”
The event in Santa Rosa was sponsored by the Sonoma Country Office of Education. Science Olympiad is a national nonprofit organization whose goal is to instill a life-long love of science and to celebrate student achievement in the sciences.
