After placing third in the “Picture This” competition at the state level last year, seniors Gracia Ng and Ashvin Strivatsa are officially the “Picture This” gurus of the Science Olympiad team. They have already undergone hours of training throughout the 2008-2009 season.
“It’s good that we have experience so that we know how the competition runs at both the regional and state levels,” said Ng. “This way, we know how to practice and what our weaknesses are so that we can focus on those.”
Facing the competition with an effective strategy is important, since the team members only have four minutes to draw and correctly guess as many scientific terms as they can.
“One of the strategies we have is the passing almost certainly hopeless terms as quickly as we can so as not to lose precious time on them,” said Vibhor Kumar, 10.
Words that are abstract and overall hard to visually depict on paper, such as “procedure” and “chemical process,” are best left alone and passed. Knowing and being able to recognize these words quickly is a skill that team members must hone.
“We also have some simple pictures we use to help get teammates’ minds on the right track,” said Jing Xing, 12.
For example, drawing a pair of glasses will signify that the term is related to a field of scientific study, and drawing a sun will represent a word that is involved with heat like energy, or light like photosynthesis.
As the team practices more and more, they not only increase their pool of symbolic picture, but also increase their understanding of each others’ deliberate marks on the paper. Each drawing brings them closer as a team to being as strong as possible for this year’s competitions.
