What science olympiads test
School science olympiads mostly follow the class syllabus, but they test it differently from a school exam. A school test might ask, “What is photosynthesis?” An olympiad is more likely to describe a plant kept in a dark cupboard for a week and ask what will happen to it, and why. The fact is the same; the question asks whether the student can use it.
That makes science olympiads a test of understanding, observation and reasoning more than memory. Many questions describe an experiment, a diagram or a small table of results and ask what it shows. Others ask what would change if one condition were different. A student who has only learnt definitions often finds these harder than expected.
For older students, the national science olympiad pathway goes further. The junior stage mixes physics, chemistry, biology and some maths, and the senior stages in physics, chemistry, biology and astronomy go well past the school textbook, with numerical problems, long answers and, at later stages, practical tests.
Common question types
Described in general terms, the question families that appear most often are:
- Identify and classify: sorting living and non-living things, materials by their properties, animals by their features, or changes as physical or chemical.
- Cause and effect: “what would happen if…” questions about plants, the weather, magnets, heat or the human body.
- Experiment-based: a short description of a set-up and a result, followed by what it proves or what was wrong with it.
- Diagram questions: labelling or interpreting a drawing of a plant, the eye, a circuit, a food chain or the water cycle.
- Data and graphs: reading a table of temperatures, growth or speeds, and drawing a conclusion.
- Everyday science: why a steel spoon feels colder than a wooden one, why we see lightning before hearing thunder, why ice floats.
- Numericals (older classes): speed, density, force, pressure, work, current and chemical quantities, often with units to convert.
Practice ideas by age
Classes 2–4
- Notice things together. Watch a seed sprout on wet cotton, see which objects float in a bucket, observe the moon over a month.
- Ask “why?” and “what if?” about everyday things: why does a puddle disappear, what if a plant gets no water?
- Sort and group. Kitchen items by material, leaves by shape, animals by where they live. Classification questions become easy.
- Read simple information books about animals, space and the body. They build the vocabulary science questions use.
Classes 5–7
- Explain before you memorise. For each new term, ask your child to explain it in their own words with an example.
- Small home experiments, done safely: dissolving salt and sugar in hot and cold water, making a shadow clock, testing which materials let light through.
- Draw diagrams from memory. If your child can sketch the parts of a flower or a simple circuit without looking, they know it.
- Practise reading short experiment descriptions and saying in one sentence what each one tests.
Classes 8–10
- Make the school chapters solid first. Force, motion, light, cells, atoms and chemical reactions underpin most questions.
- Practise numericals with units written at every step. Many marks are lost to a missing conversion.
- For the junior pathway, work through one good problem book slowly, and practise the maths it needs, such as ratios, graphs and simple algebra.
- Ask “how do we know?” for big ideas. It builds the reasoning that experiment questions test.
Classes 11–12
- Choose one pathway subject if aiming at the senior stages. Depth in one is worth more than a light pass at three.
- Past papers from the first stage, timed and then reviewed, show the level and style far better than guide books.
- Learn to leave questions blank where wrong answers lose marks. Practise judging when you are sure enough to answer.
- Keep a log of problems and ideas, especially in physics and chemistry, where the same idea returns in new forms.
Example questions
These are original practice questions written for this page, not taken from any exam.
1. Living or not (Classes 2–4)
Which of these is not a living thing: a mushroom, a stone, a fern or a snail?
Answer: a stone. A stone does not grow, feed, breathe or reproduce; a mushroom is a fungus, which is alive.
2. A new substance (Classes 5–7)
Which of these is a chemical change: melting butter, dissolving sugar in water, iron rusting, or breaking glass?
Answer: iron rusting. Rusting makes a new substance (iron oxide); the others only change shape or state, or mix without making anything new.
3. Ice and water (Classes 5–7)
You have 1 kg of ice and 1 kg of liquid water. Which takes up more space?
Answer: the ice. Water expands as it freezes, so ice is less dense than water, which is also why ice floats.
4. Average speed (Classes 8–10)
A bus travels 120 km in 2 hours, then another 120 km in 3 hours. What is its average speed for the whole journey?
Answer: 48 km/h. Average speed is total distance ÷ total time, so 240 km ÷ 5 hours = 48 km/h, not the average of 60 and 40.
5. Force and acceleration (Classes 11–12)
A 2 kg trolley on a smooth floor is pushed with a net force of 10 N. What is its acceleration?
Answer: 5 m/s². From Newton’s second law, acceleration = force ÷ mass = 10 N ÷ 2 kg = 5 m/s².
Mistakes worth watching
- Choosing the familiar word. An option that repeats a textbook term is not always right. Read what the question describes.
- Ignoring the conditions. “In the absence of air” or “at the same temperature” change the answer. Underline them.
- Unit slips. Grams and kilograms, centimetres and metres, minutes and seconds.
- Reading a graph’s shape but not its axes. Check what each axis measures before drawing a conclusion.
For general preparation, including mock papers and reviewing mistakes, see the olympiad prep guide. The maths guide helps with the numerical side of senior science.
Where daily practice fits
A few questions a day keep science facts and ideas fresh between longer sessions. Ado’s free daily quiz of 8 questions, including a 60-second sprint, covers science with maths, English, GK and reasoning, ranked only against students the same age; it is a daily habit rather than olympiad preparation.