Building robots, students bring science to life


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SALT LAKE CITY — Dubbed a "battle of the brains" by its organizers, more than 900 students attended the Utah Science Olympiad Saturday.

Held at the University of Utah Saturday, the Utah Science Olympiad is a state science education competition. High school and junior high students from across the state came to Salt Lake to show off gadgets and gizmos they built.

"We look at stuff differently. Most kids look at stuff like this and they say science, school...eh," said competitor Austin Spaulding, of Pineview Middle School. "But it's something different for us, we enjoy learning about stuff and getting to interact and learn about stuff we don't understand."

Spaulding and Katie Moyes, also from Pineview Middle School, built a robot together with an arm designed to pick up different items — including ping pong balls, nails, and tubes — and place them in boxes and jugs worth different points.

At this point, the two students said, they aren't thinking about careers, and they just participated out of interest. But getting to build robots during class instead of hitting the books, and take an educational field trip are good perks too, they said.

"It's really awesome, you get to come all the way up to Salt Lake from St. George, be excused the last half of class Friday," Moyes said.

The Utah Science Olympiad's goals are to create a technologically-literate workforce by bringing science to life and show students how science works.

The competition is just one of 50 state competitions. Winning junior and senior high school teams go on to the Science Olympiad National Tournament in May.

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