The National Science Bowl® (NSB) for middle school was established in 2002, and is a competitive event for middle school students. School teams compete in a fast-paced question and answer format to solve technical problems in the science and math fields. More than 4,500 middle school students compete each year in the NSB. This is one of the nation’s largest science competitions and was created by the Department of Energy to encourage students to excel in math and science.

Each school that participates has a team of 4 students with one alternate and a coach. The team that represented Nysmith School consisted of Vaibhav Sharma, Ajit Kadaveru, Anusha Allamsetty, Ishaan Kumar, Kaien Yang and Coach Venkata Allamsetty.

The middle school competition that Nysmith students competed in, consisted of two types of competition – Academic Science and Math Competition and an Electric Car Race Competition.

The Nysmith team performed very well in the round robin stage of the Academic Competition and secured 3rd place in their division. They lost only to Fort Settlement Middle School of TX (last year’s champions) and to Marshall Middle School from IL (lost by a margin of only 4 points).

In the Electric Car Race Competition the students were given the motor, battery and parts and were asked to design, build, and race their car. Nysmith team built a car with an innovative gear design. This was a great hands-on experience where their creative engineering skills would come in to play. The Nysmith students missed advancing to the next round by 1 second.

This was a wonderful experience for all students. The students had a taste of what it is like to compete at the National Level with the best teams that represent each state. Most importantly, they had lots of fun, staying in their dorms and sleeping in their bunk beds, playing pool, basketball and volley ball in their free time, wearing a different science bowl t-shirt each day, and enjoying unlimited desserts.

A big congratulations to the students, coach Venkata Allamsetty and parents that showed commitment and dedication.

More information is available on the NSB website: http://www.science.energy.gov/wdts/nsb/.