Photos and article by Mary Alice Murphy
WNMU hosts Science Olympiad 012817
WNMU hosts Science Olympiad 012817
Creighton Apodaca of Deming High School competes in the Electric Car event.
WNMU hosts Science Olympiad 012817
Leticia Escobar and Raymond Morgan from Lordsburg High School compete in the tower event.
WNMU hosts Science Olympiad 012817
Cody Moore and Rayce Wagley from Animas show off their tower.
WNMU hosts Science Olympiad 012817
Aizlyn Martinez and Daniel Martinez from Snell Middle School prepare their tower to see how much weight it will hold.
WNMU hosts Science Olympiad 012817
Cassandra Navarrete, left, and Jaqueline Alvarado, right, with their coach from Sierra Middle School in Las Cruces, prepare their pop bottle rockets to see how long they will fly without breaking the egg inside.
WNMU hosts Science Olympiad 012817
One of the rockets flies high.
WNMU hosts Science Olympiad 012817
-?Curtis Welker and Nathan Shelley of Silver High School prepare their tower.
WNMU hosts Science Olympiad 012817
Snell Middle School students Brittney Maldonado and Delaney Warhank hope their hovercraft will hover and move down the table.
WNMU hosts Science Olympiad 012817
Alex Ortiz watches as Orion Rottman launches their plane, partially seen at far right.
WNMU hosts Science Olympiad 012817
From Socorro High School, Alejandro Portillo and Ziah Dhawan test their robotic arm.
WNMU hosts Science Olympiad 012817
The robotic arm in action.
WNMU hosts Science Olympiad 012817
James Woods and Josh Walsh from Cottonwood Valley Charter School in Socorro manage their tower.
WNMU hosts Science Olympiad 012817
La Plata Middle School students Elena Gonzales and Haylee Thurnherr get ready to test their tower.
WNMU hosts Science Olympiad 012817
Elena and Haylee carefully pour into the bucket a little bit of sand at a time. It supported the maximum of15 kilos of sand without breaking.
Students from all over the region competed in the Science Olympiad at Western New Mexico University on Saturday to determine who would advance to state competition. In the gym and just outside, feats of engineering, such as electric car, airplane and helicopter, scrambler, robotic arm, tower strength and hovercraft were happening simultaneously. Other students were competing in written and lab tests at Harlan and Martinez halls.
The electric car event required the car to go down a track and end up as close as possible past the finish line.
Students built planes and helicopters mostly of balsa wood and cellophane. They vied to have the longest flights.
The scrambler, not pictured, had a powered vehicle with an egg on the front, trying to reach as far as possible down the track without breaking the egg on the wall just beyond the finish line.
The robotic arm featured piles of pennies that had to be dropped by the arm onto a target and spread about so none were stackedG