Draft:National Science Olympiad (Brazil)

• Comment: Please cite WP:SECONDARYSOURCES. Safari Scribe^{Edits! Talk!} 09:45, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

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Not to be confused with the Indian competition, National Science Olympiad.

The National Science Olympiad (Portuguese: Olimpíada Nacional de Ciências, also known as ONC) is a Brazilian student competition held in schools in Brazil, aimed towards students who are in 6th grade onwards (until 12th grade, known in Brazil as 3ª Série do Ensino Médio).

It is currently organized by the Federal University of Piauí (UFPI) and held by the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation of Brazil (MCTI). The interdisciplinary olympiad was created with the goal of stimulating interest towards the study of natural and human sciences, while also identifying talented students in the applied areas, awarding them with medals and certificates, and approximating tertiary education institutes with those of secondary education.

It is one of the main science olympiads of the country, being held every year since 2016 and involving millions of students in its most recent editions.

Structure

In its current structure, ONC is an online competition organized in two stages:

• Primeira Fase: this stage consists in a multiple-choice test, containing twenty questions to be solved in two hours. The questions go over topics related to Astronomy, Physics, Biology, Chemistry and History. All subscribed students take part in this stage, which is eliminatory and does not define awards, apart from participation certificates, which are made available on-line at the end of the olympiad.
• Segunda Fase: this stage contains a subjective test, which can include a theoretical part, containing ten questions, going over the same topics as Primeira Fase, and an additional experimental part, containing three questions, being worth 40% of the exam's grade. The exam is to be solved in two hours, the same time period as the previous stage, and is worth 100 points. The enrolled students who performed best in Primeira Fase get to participate in this stage, and the participants are eligible for awards depending on the obtained score.

Schools can request on-site participation and printed exams if certain conditions are met. In this case, online access to the exam is blocked during the exam dates to the students of the institutions which opted for this form of application.

Participation is organized in levels, separated by school year:

• Level A: 6th and 7th grade;
• Level B: 8th and 9th grade;
• Level C: 10th grade (1ª série do Ensino Médio);
• Level D: 11th grade (2ª série do Ensino Médio);
• Level E: 12th grade (3ª série do Ensino Médio) and 13th grade (4ª série do Ensino Técnico).

Awarding

The competition awards its best-performing students with gold, silver and bronze medals, and distributes honorable mention certificates to the students who answer at least half of the questions in the Segunda Fase test correctly.

The olympiad sends medals to the schools of the winners of the competition by mail. Due to environmental concerns, the olympiad does not print certificates to all schools with participants or winners.

The ten best students in each level are invited to an annual ceremony in the headquarters of MCTI, in Brasília, which awards gold medals to the present students and special prizes, which are defined by the contest's regulamentation. The single best student in each level, apart from the ceremony, also gets to visit Alcântara Space Center, in the state of Maranhão, Brazil.