Take a mousetrap, build a vehicle around it, and develop a means by which activation of the trap propels the vehicle forward to reach a designated target.

Oh – and work with 14 other students all focusing on and fiddling with one mousetrap.

Mousetrap Vehicle was just one of dozens of challenges facing 44 teams of Northern Virginia high school, middle school and elementary school students who descended upon the University of Mary Washington campus on Saturday. UMW hosted the 2020 Virginia Science Olympiad (VASO) regional qualifying round.

A total of 550 students, along with their coaches and parents, participated in events such as The Sounds of Music, Boomilevers and Ping-Pong Parachute. The latter, which took place in the Hurley Convergence Center lobby, involved using two bottle rockets to lauch a ping-pong ball attached to a parachute. Most of the events took advantage of labs and other spaces in the newly updated Jepson Science Center. Read more.

The University of Mary Washington is a premier, selective public liberal arts and sciences university in Virginia, highly respected for its commitment to academic excellence, strong undergraduate liberal arts and sciences program, and dedication to life-long learning. The university, with a total enrollment of more than 5,000, features colleges of business, education and arts and sciences, and three campuses, including a residential campus in Fredericksburg, Va., a second one in nearby Stafford and a third in Dahlgren, Va., which serves as a center of development of educational and research partnerships between the Navy, higher education institutions and the region’s employers.