Palo Alto High School’s Science Olympiad team will be competing at the regional Science Olympiad competition on March 14 at San Jose City College.

According to president of the logistics team senior Alex Lu, Science Olympiad covers a wide range of science topics.

“Science Olympiad is a competition in which teams of 15 students compete in 23 different events in groups of two to three,” Lu said. “These events can be classified as study, lab or engineering events. In study events, we study based on certain guidelines and then take a test on the day of the competition. Lab events involve  understanding whatever material is encompassed in the guidelines, but also being familiar with lab procedures. Engineering events are events in which we build certain devices or objects, according to the rules of each event, that must accomplish a certain task on the day of the competition.” 

The team has been practicing since October, according to Lu.

“We hold weekly meetings at one of our houses for the entire team so that we can study and prepare together,” Lu said. “Most of our preparation occurs outside of school, except for a few lab events. We’re getting into the final stages of preparation.”

The team has historically done well at regionals.

“Paly actually has two teams: Green Team and White Team,” Lu said. “Green Team is generally the more competitive of the two and for the last several years has taken first in the region and first or second at States.”

This year, the team hopes to qualify for Nationals.

“We’re hoping to not only maintain our performance in Regionals, but also perform better at the Norcal State competition, where we placed second last year,” Lu said. “In 2013, we placed first over Mira Loma by one point at the State competition and became the first team from the Bay Area to qualify to Nationals, so we’re hoping to do that again.”