JPL Hosts Ocean Sciences Bowl

Students from University High School in Irvine claimed first place at the Los Angeles Surf Bowl, a regional academic competition focused on ocean science disciplines hosted at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena this past weekend.

Since 2000, JPL’s Public Services Office has coordinated the Los Angeles regional contest with support from laboratory staff volunteers and former Ocean Sciences Bowl participants from the local community.

The winning team, consisting of students Nethra Iyer, Joanne Chen, Matthew Feng, Avery Hexun, and Angelina Yan, along with coach David Knight, secured their victory among eight competing schools from Los Angeles and Orange counties at the March 29 event. This marks University High’s second consecutive win at this regional competition, an impressive achievement complemented by their recent victory at the JPL-hosted regional Science Bowl earlier this month.

Santa Monica High School earned second place in the competition, with Francisco Bravo Medical Magnet High School in Los Angeles taking third.

The Los Angeles Surf Bowl was the final regional competition in a series of approximately 20 held nationwide this year, leading up to the virtual National Ocean Sciences Bowl finals scheduled for mid-May.

For the Ocean Sciences Bowl, teams of four to five students with a coach spend months preparing for rapid-fire questions across multiple scientific disciplines including biology, chemistry, geology, and physics, as well as related topics in geography, technology, history, policy, and current events. This year’s competition theme was “Sounding the Depths: Understanding Ocean Acoustics.”

The competition follows a format similar to “Jeopardy!” with team members required to answer multiple-choice questions within five seconds using a buzzer system. A question in the chemistry category might be “What chemical is the principal source of energy at many of Earth’s hydrothermal vent systems?” (It’s hydrogen sulfide.) Other questions can be considerably more challenging.

Correct answers earn bonus questions allowing team consultation, while more complex “team challenge questions” require collaborative problem-solving.

University High junior Matthew Feng, a returning competitor, said the team’s success felt like a payoff for hours of studying together, including on weekends. He keeps coming back to the competition partly for the sense of community and also for the personal challenge. “It’s nice to compete and meet people, see people who were here last year,” Matthew added. “Pushing yourself mentally — the first year I was shaking so hard because I wasn’t used to that much adrenaline.”

The National Ocean Sciences Bowl operates as a program of the Center for Ocean Leadership at the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, a nonprofit consortium of colleges and universities focused partially on Earth science-related education.