On April 6, nine Jupiter High students competed in the annual Brain Bee neuroscience competition at the Max Planck Florida Institute for Neuroscience.

The Brain Bee is a single-elimination trivia competition competed in teams of three that covers topics such as learning, memory, emotion, sensation, movement, aging, neurobiology, brain anatomy and neural disorders.

“Competing in the Brain Bee helps students to experience science outside of the classroom. It exposes them to high-level neuroscience content. It helps them in their content knowledge for AP Psychology and AP Biology,” Shari Rodgers, Brain Bee sponsor and Advanced Placement Biology teacher, said.

The top three teams receive a gift card of varying amounts, and the first place team gets the chance to shadow a Max Planck Institute scientist for a day.

“I really wanted my group to win because I want to go into medicine or science in some capacity and getting to see what an actual scientist does would have been so cool,” junior Eva Miklos said.

The teamwork required to be successful in the Brain Bee teaches students how to work with others and make time to study for something outside of school.

“I’m not going to lie, working with all of my teammates’ busy extra curricular schedules to find time to get together and study was challenging, but in the end we made it work and I am proud of how far we got,” senior Samantha Clayman said.

This year, the event was live streamed to the Internet for anyone who made a free account to watch. In an effort to encourage those not competing to watch the competition, Max Planck Institute gave a 3D printer to the school who had the most people watch the live stream, and Jupiter High won.

“We are so amazed and thankful at the number of people that supported us by logging in,” Rodgers said. “The first task of the 3D printer will be to print trophies for the Brain Bee participants! From there, maybe chloroplasts, catapults, insects…”