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– Jackie YuPalo Alto High School’s Science Olympiad club continues to build on its successes from last year as four of its members took first place at the 12th annual Bechtel WonderCup Challenge on Sat, Nov. 6 at Stanford’s Hewlett Teaching Center.
“I did not expect to win at all,” senior Jenny Hong said. “For me, WonderCup has never been a competition I focused on or studied extra for, since the questions were pretty well covered by my science courses so far.”
In the final round of the WonderCup Challenge, Paly’s “Bowser” team competed against Harker’s “Never in Doubt” to complete an innovation challenge. The Bowser team members included Hong, senior Michael Yuan, junior Daniel Shan and sophomore Jacqueline Woo,
“We were given four simple model airplane kits, and we had 15 minutes to build an airplane that would stay in the air as long as possible,” Hong said.
The team had been given identical kits four days in advance to experiment with. New kits were given on the day of the final round, according to Hong.
Unlike the first-time Paly competitors, the Harker students had experience because one of their team members had competed in the same challenge the year before in which Harker lost to Lynbrook High School.
“I was pretty intimidated,” Hong said. “Harker is a pretty competitive school, and one person on their team had actually done the final challenge last year as well.”
[[nid:25335]]Ultimately, despite Harker’s confidence, its team was unable to produce an airplane that stayed in flight longer than Paly’s. Paly claimed the WonderCup trophy and MacBook Airs for their efforts.
“We did do extra preparation for the final round, but I was still pretty stunned to see Harker’s plane fall before ours,” Hong said. “I think it was pretty exciting to high-five teammates while holding MacBooks.”
This is the first time in Paly history for a team from its Science Olympiad club to earn first place in WonderCup.
Another Paly team, “Silviana” placed fourth place, winning $150 for each player, according to Leonard.
The WonderCup Challenge is a science competition for Bay Area high school science quiz and innovation teams. Students can participate by creating a team of two girls and two boys.
This year, 220 teams competed in round one, 22 teams advanced to round two and only two teams faced off in the final round. The Paly Science Olympiad club sent 14 teams to participate in the qualifying round.
“I was pleased to see so many members of Paly’s Science Olympiad club participate in round one,” Leonard said. “Fourteen Paly teams with a total of 56 students participated in round one.”
For the first qualifying round of the competition, each team completed 30 multiple-choice questions online. This year, the cutoff score was 25 points and the “Bowser” team passed with 29 correct answers, according to Hong.
The second round, a written test, took place on Nov. 2 at Stanford’s Oak Lounge. It consisted of 30 free response questions covering physics, chemistry and biology. The questions were read out loud in sets of 10, according to Hong.
The WonderCup trophy, a model Klein bottle now graces the science department lunchroom.
“I was very excited and happy to see Paly’s team ‘Bowser’ win the Wonder Cup,” Leonard said. “I know that the team members study very hard.”