A New Attitude and a Q-Tip Nets Results at Science Games

Mark Weir had participated in the Canadian University Science Games for two years when he noticed that he, “had a lot of fun, but I felt there was something missing.” He says that as he had the good fortune to become the captain of one of the three teams that Western sent to Ottawa on the weekend of January 7-11, he “thought it would be fun if we kind of had some unifying features of the team.” The answer that he and a friend came up with consisted of bright red headbands, aviator sunglasses and a small ghetto blaster that played 80’s rock music. Weir adds that they also “made a novelty sized Q-tip and put sunglasses on it. It was a lot of fun; we almost took the other universities by surprise. By the end of the weekend, everyone was so enthusiastic about it and they thought it was so cool. It was something that they really hadn’t seen at the Science Games before.”

The Canadian University Science Games are held at a different venue each year. Although all universities in Canada can participate, travel and time constraints usually limit the participation to those institutions within the Quebec and Ontario corridor. The games include a series of events ranging from the Trivia Challenge, the Debate and the Cascade. The Cascade is essentially a contest to construct a machine to complete a specific task within four hours. This year the goal was to build a device that could toss a plushy version of the University of Ottawa’s mascot, known as Gee Gee, onto a flat surface. Unlike previous years where teams brought their own various materials to construct an apparatus, “this year it was a lot more fair,” says Weir. “They didn’t tell you about any of the things before you got there, everyone got to the room at the same time, the same items were at each lab bench and you had to use those apparatus.” Weir adds, “We actually won the Cascade event which was featured on the Discovery Channel… it was really fun. The Spirit Award is kind of the overall championship. It’s the team that goes there and shows the most enthusiasm and really gets other people kind of excited about the games itself.”

Since the sixth annual Canadian University Science Games were held in Ottawa, it should come as no surprise that the debates were done in a parliamentary style, “One side was the government introducing a bill and the other side was the opposition,” says Weir. “The government got to outline the parameters of the Bill and then the people who were the opposition had to attack the Bill from that perspective so it was really well organized.” Weir says that this year his team debated, “the ethics behind designer babies, cloning and genetic modification. We also debated about BSE and Mad Cow Disease.”

The Trivia Challenge is in a format similar to Reach For The Top. The categories consist of, Biology & Health Sciences, Chemistry & Physics, Mathematics and Miscellaneous that often deals with pop-culture.

The three events of the Cascade, the Trivia Challenge and the Debate make up the bulk of the academic portion of the games. In all, Western placed third in academics while the University of Montreal placed first. But for overall performance, Western took the top honours of the Spirit Award. “It was something that we’ve really enjoyed in the past but this year, not only did we really enjoy ourselves, we did extremely well,” Weir says.

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