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Juniors place second in national TEAMS competition
Provided by David Zhu (11)
The Team: Juniors Evani Radiya-Dixit, Neymika Jain, Venkat Sankar, Kai-Siang Ang, Manan Shah, Peter Wu, Arjun Subramaniam and David Zhu, took second place at the National TEAMS competition in Grapevine, Texas. This is their second year participating in TEAMS.
Eight Upper School juniors placed second in the nation in the 9th and 10th grade division of in the Tests of Engineering Aptitude, Mathematics and Science (TEAMS) competition in Grapevine, Texas on June 31 and July 1.
The team consisted of Neymika Jain, Evani Radiya-Dixit, Kai-Siang An, Venkat Sankar, Manan Shah, Arjun Subramaniam, Peter Wu and team captain David Zhu.
Neymika was glad that she and her team worked well together and as a result their efforts bore fruit.
“Overall, rather than the competitive success, the teamwork during the event was worthwhile, and we were fortunate that our diligence paid off in the end,” she said.
TEAMS is a competition focused on developing an interest and understanding of science and engineering fields in students through hands-on challenges and exams.
The TEAMS competition consists of three separate sections. The first is a presentation regarding renewable energy resources in urban areas that have been affected by natural disasters. The second is a pre written essay urging investors to put money into a type of biofuel, and the final component is a test which involves both theoretical and hands-on challenges and requires both engineering and math knowledge.
Evani described her favorite part of the problem-solving section of the competition.
“For the problem solving, we were given a set of math problems as well as the task of designing a wind turbine,” Evani said. “Even though we were crunched on time, it was fun working together to build the turbine blades.”
In order to prepare for the competition, the students began meeting up in late spring to work on the presentation, and they began to work even earlier on the essay portion as it was due before the competition. They used questions from previous years to practice for the problem set.
Although the teams conduct their research and prepare independently, all of the students are part of the Technology Student Association (TSA) advised by Math Department Chair Anthony Silk.
“The most important [skill] is group work because its eight people having to solve one test, so you have to be able to organize your thoughts, figure out who’s doing what and be able to discuss,” Silk said.
David appreciated the collaborative aspect of the competition.
“There are plenty of individual competitions out there, but I really looked forward to working with a team with all my friends to solve some interesting problems,“ he said
The team looks forward to participating in TEAMS next year, and hopes to progress to the national level again in the 11th and 12th grade division.
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