TERRE HAUTE — A Terre Haute South Vigo High School team will compete against 66 other teams from across the nation this weekend in the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Science Bowl.
The team will arrive in Washington, D.C., today, with competition scheduled for Sunday and Monday.
Team members are E.G. Wright, Raj Bhuptani, Pardha Ponugoti, Peter Bittar and Joseph Botros. The coach is Aaron Warner.
“It’s the best team we’ve ever put together,” Warner said. The competition is rigorous, he said, describing it as an “intellectual endurance competition.”
The first day of competition could involve 12 rounds lasting 25 minutes each, he said.
To prepare, team members have been doing a lot of reading, and they’ve also practiced during the week and on weekends, Warner said.
Terre Haute South will face some tough competition from science and math magnet schools, Warner said.
Wright, a South senior and the team captain, said, “I think it’s going to be pretty difficult. There are a lot of magnet schools.”
But the South team is well prepared for competition, he said. “We’ve been practicing a lot, studying and doing research.” He’s both excited and nervous. “I want to do well. It’s my last year [at South],” he said.
The students also will get a tour of Washington, D.C., tonight, and they’ll visit national museums Friday.
The National Science Bowl is the nation’s largest academic competition of its kind and the only one sponsored by a federal agency.
Each of the 67 participating teams — representing 42 states, the District of Columbia, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico — emerged from a regional competition to earn an all-expenses-paid trip to compete in the Science Bowl. More than 12,000 high-school students competed in this year’s regional competitions.
Students have spent months preparing for the contest, which features head-to-head competition in a question-and-answer format similar to “Jeopardy!” Participants will be quizzed on all science disciplines, including biology, chemistry, earth science, physics and astronomy as well as math.
DOE’s National Science Bowl question-and-answer competition begins Sunday at 11:15 a.m. EDT. The final six teams will be announced at 9 p.m. Championship rounds will be conducted Monday.
The National Champion and second- and third-place teams will receive an all-expenses-paid science research trip of their choice to the International Youth Science Forum in London; a nuclear science site in France; or the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility in Newport News, Va.
To find out more about DOE’s National Science Bowl, or to check how a team is doing during National Finals weekend, visit national
sciencebowl.energy.gov.
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South heading to National Science Bowl
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