by Jackie Gong
North’s science team placed second out of 46 teams at the Science Olympiad competition at Framingham State University Friday, March 27 according to senior Izzy Brand, captain of the ‘Buildaheads’ group of the team. The team sent 18 members to the state-level competition, according to freshman Sam Kesselman.
The competition was split into 23 separate events, including forensics, astronomy, fossils, and protein modeling. Between teams of 15 members for the main events and three alternate members splitting into teams of two, the team participated in each event.
To place, “individuals receive medals for their performance in their own events, then the teams are ranked based on their average placing in individual events,” said Brand.
The team placed second to Acton-Boxborough, who has gotten first for the past six years. But Kesselman doesn’t feel too bad. “I feel great about [placing second],” he said. “I personally beat them at [Cryptography], which was uplifting.”
The team did better than last year, scoring first place in several events including astronomy, cryptology, geologic mapping, and scrambler, said Kesselman.
The team has been preparing for this competition since November, when the list of topics and event descriptions were first distributed, said Brand.
“It’s a long and tedious process but with great, shiny medals at the end,” said Kesselman.