Over 50 teams of high school students converged on Kwantlen Polytechnic University's (KPU) Richmond campus on Nov. 18 for the Kwantlen Science Challenge.
The annual day-long science competition saw teams compete in five one-hour long practical lab activities in biology, chemistry, environmental science, engineering design, geology, mathematics, physics, and sustainable agriculture.
Participants came from schools from across Metro Vancouver, along with teams from Vancouver Island and Washington State, to compete in activities designed to be educational, entertaining, and challenging.
Senior students were tasked with investigating the properties of an unknown acid, moving as many paper clips as possible across a finish line using two D cells, identifying common agricultural pests, and competing in a science-themed version of Jeopardy. Junior students were asked to build a boat capable of propelling across an artificial pond, answer questions about B.C. wildfires, calculate the volume of objects, predict outcomes of physics demonstrations, and test their knowledge in a Jeopardy game.
Winning the Senior Division was a team from Port Moody Secondary. Capturing the first-place title in the Junior Division was Eric Hamber Secondary.
Senior (Grades 11/12):
- Port Moody Secondary Team 2
- Port Moody Secondary Team 1
- Semiahmoo Secondary
Junior (Grades 8/9/10):
- Eric Hamber Secondary
- A.R. MacNeill
- R.E. Mountain Secondary School and Walnut Grove Secondary