RANCHO BERNARDO -- Science proved too cool for ordinary schoolrooms when hundreds of students spent Saturday launching homemade rockets and smashing miniature bridges at San Diego County's annual Science Olympiad.

"Most people think you read out of books and memorize, but the Science Olympiad makes it fun," said Ekta Gujral, 11, a seventh-grader at Valley Middle School in Carlsbad.

Gujral was one of more than 1,600 county middle and high school students from 45 schools who participated in a daylong regional competition that would send the winners to the state Science Olympiad in April.

Gujral had used her science know-how to ensure that her miniature bridge could withstand a 32-pound weight without snapping at the day's Elevated Bridge contest.

"My bridge bent, but it didn't break," she said.

At the end of the day, North County regional teams had won top overall scores to advance to the state competition.

Torrey Pines High School in the Carmel Valley neighborhood of San Diego, a San Dieguito Union High School District school, placed first in the high school division. Mount Carmel High School in Rancho Penasquitos, a Poway Unified School District school, placed second.

In the middle school division, Mesa Verde Middle School in San Diego, a Poway district school, placed first. Carmel Valley Middle School in Carmel Valley, a San Dieguito district school, placed second.

Early in the competition, Vista High School sophomores Nathan Fronk and Zachary Rogers, both 15, were celebrating their success as other bridges behind them crashed into pieces.

The two credited trigonometry and four weeks of preparation for their performance in the competition held on the grounds of Rancho Bernardo High School and neighboring Bernardo Heights Middle School.

Nathan and Zachary encouraged more students to study science.

"Everything around us is based on science," Nathan said.

"Science is the best way to make the world a better place," Zachary said.

School lawns were transformed into arenas ringed by cheering parents of students who launched homemade plastic rockets containing raw eggs at the Egg-o-Naut contest.

The goal was to safely transport the egg to earth with a miniature parachute, but James Orsulak's chute failed to open. He and his friends cheered when he discovered that his egg remained intact.

"I thought after such a hard landing, it would be in tiny pieces," said a smiling Orsulak, 15, a ninth-grader at University City High School in San Diego.

At the Wright Stuff competition, a cheering crowd suddenly turned silent at the sight of a delicate wooden airplane powered by rubber bands gracefully circling above them again and again.

There were gasps that became cheers and applause when the tiny plane struck a ceiling beam and then righted itself, continuing its circular descent.

"It was cool when it recovered," Lee Hagaman, 11, a sixth-grader at Stanley Middle School in San Diego said about her plane.

Meanwhile, Kristin Edwards and Madison Tegen, both 12 and seventh-graders at Black Mountain Middle School in Rancho Penasquitos, were waiting outside the Scramblers contest.

The event involved aiming a homemade vehicle carrying a raw egg toward a wall without crashing into it, and the two said they had spent three months perfecting their entry.

"You don't really notice it's science because it's fun," Madison said.

Science as fun was reflected on team T-shirts and banners. On the back of each T-shirt for Carlsbad's Valley Middle School teams was a stick figure waving a test tube and a calculator.

"Stand back. I'm going to try science," the T-shirt read.

"I love the festival atmosphere with the team camps and banners," said Liz Jablecki, a retired La Jolla High School biology teacher who has been the regional contest's volunteer coordinator since 1987. "It keeps growing," she noted, about a contest that began 22 years ago with some 200 students.

Jablecki praised this year's powerhouse roster of event leaders representing UC San Diego, San Diego State University, the Reuben H. Fleet Science Center and the National Weather Service.

The day's event leaders also represented science-minded companies as familiar as Qualcomm, Pfizer Global, General Atomics, Fluor and Thermo Fisher Scientific.