All the Buzz About the 2013 Geographic Bee
Sathwik Karnik, a 12-year-old from Massachusetts, won the 25th-annual Bee.
Karnik correctly named Chimborazo—a mountain peak in Ecuador—as the peak on Earth that's farthest from the earth's center to best 13-year-old Conrad Oberhaus, of Lincolnshire, Illinois, in a heated final round.
The seventh-grader at King Philip Regional Middle School reaps the grand-prize rewards: a $25,000 college scholarship, a trip to the Galápagos Islands (for himself and one parent), and a lifetime membership to the National Geographic Society. (See Geo Bee questions from past years.)
Nearly five million students started in this year's national geography competition. After state and local bouts, those millions were whittled down to the top 54, and then the final 10—who will all appear in the final televised round. (It airs on the National Geographic Channel on
