Poorly Run Event Stories

[kenniky]

1. Islip Invite Chem Lab. ... Also, the test had the nitrogen cycle, for some reason, event though I couldn't find anything on the rules to support that. Fortunately they were lenient when scoring that section.

I looked at that test, I'm pretty sure it was the carbon cycle, which is infinitely more relevant to global warming

[Avogadro]

1. Islip Invite Chem Lab. ... Also, the test had the nitrogen cycle, for some reason, event though I couldn't find anything on the rules to support that. Fortunately they were lenient when scoring that section.

I looked at that test, I'm pretty sure it was the carbon cycle, which is infinitely more relevant to global warming

I'll double check that when I have the opportunity- it was pretty early in the year so I might have misremembered. Still, the cycle itself has less to do with "effects on our climate" as is stated in the rules. But, as I said, I'll check this again.

(As a side, note, the rest of that test was pretty good )

[Adi1008]

1. Islip Invite Chem Lab. ... Also, the test had the nitrogen cycle, for some reason, event though I couldn't find anything on the rules to support that. Fortunately they were lenient when scoring that section.

I looked at that test, I'm pretty sure it was the carbon cycle, which is infinitely more relevant to global warming

I'll double check that when I have the opportunity- it was pretty early in the year so I might have misremembered. Still, the cycle itself has less to do with "effects on our climate" as is stated in the rules. But, as I said, I'll check this again.

(As a side, note, the rest of that test was pretty good )

This is what the test says:

[kenniky]

Might as well put this in:

Optics States: well organized, test was a bit easy but that's alright. The mirrors didn't have coverings though so we were able to just look through them and make sure they lined up lol. Definitely an important part of the setup to have

Also: EDITING HYPE

[Avogadro]

I looked at that test, I'm pretty sure it was the carbon cycle, which is infinitely more relevant to global warming

I'll double check that when I have the opportunity- it was pretty early in the year so I might have misremembered. Still, the cycle itself has less to do with "effects on our climate" as is stated in the rules. But, as I said, I'll check this again.

(As a side, note, the rest of that test was pretty good )

This is what the test says:

In that case I'll apologize for my misremembering that question, but I still hold that it doesn't have as much to do with "effects on our climate" as one might hope. And the lab being a tiebreaker still bothers me.

[alleycat03]

Wow I definitely have a bad event story!

So the Kansas State Tournament was this past Saturday, and the Forensics event was absolutely horrible.
First of all, there was no description of a crime, no suspects or murder or anything. It just said "you found bones behind your garage. Identify them." And that was it. Now, there were 7 powders, which was about normal, 3 hairs, 2 fibers, and 1 plastic. Besides the powders, those numbers were extremely low for samples. So I thought it would be pretty easy, but boy was I wrong. As I tried to identify the hairs, I realized that they had been put on dissection micrscopes instead of compound ones, which did NOT have a high enough magnification to actually identify the hairs. The hairs that they used were definitetly dog and cat hair, which is not allowed in the rules. After flipping to the next page, that's where it got weird. The next page wanted us to identify a "sticky substance" that came from a honeycomb. They had provided us with a beaker full of what was clearly honey, and we were supposed to somehow do chromatography with it. I looked it up later on- you cannot do paper chromatography with honey. So I just kind of smeared the honey onto a slip and stapled it to my test. Then, there were two mass spectra graphs, which is quite often the hardest part of the test. One of them was relatively easy, but the other was almost impossible to decipher because of the large number of different peaks. Then, we had to match up DNA which was very simple, and the crime scene DNA matched exactly with the DNA of a chicken. After that, there were some various pictures of "physical evidence" which was definitely the weirdest part of the test. There were pictures of feathers and bird tracks on the test, but no questions to go along with them. There was also a station set up with more physical evidence, like soil that had a dead cockroach, some random feathers, a dead mouse that was floating in solution in a beaker, and then some random bones. Now, since the only question that the test had asked was to identify the bones, I focused on them. They were clearly not the bones of a chicken, even though that's what the rest of the evidence pointed to. The bones had a couple of vertebrae, a leg bone, and some kind of hip bone or pelvis. The mouth of the skull had only 2 teeth that weren't missing, and it clearly had molars. Now, chickens definitely DO NOT have molars, so we were completely stumped. Bone analysis is definitely NOT a part of the test, and most of the teams I talked to just put down chicken even though the bones provided were clearly not from a chicken. My team put down cat, but after researching more skulls, we think it might have been a fox skull, which has absolutely nothing to do with the forensics event. So from breaking the rules to not providing proper microscopes to adding in aspects that had absolutely nothing to do with forensics, this was definitely the worst test I had ever taken.

[pikachu4919]

Wow I definitely have a bad event story!

So the Kansas State Tournament was this past Saturday, and the Forensics event was absolutely horrible.
First of all, there was no description of a crime, no suspects or murder or anything. It just said "you found bones behind your garage. Identify them." And that was it. Now, there were 7 powders, which was about normal, 3 hairs, 2 fibers, and 1 plastic. Besides the powders, those numbers were extremely low for samples. So I thought it would be pretty easy, but boy was I wrong. As I tried to identify the hairs, I realized that they had been put on dissection micrscopes instead of compound ones, which did NOT have a high enough magnification to actually identify the hairs. The hairs that they used were definitetly dog and cat hair, which is not allowed in the rules. After flipping to the next page, that's where it got weird. The next page wanted us to identify a "sticky substance" that came from a honeycomb. They had provided us with a beaker full of what was clearly honey, and we were supposed to somehow do chromatography with it. I looked it up later on- you cannot do paper chromatography with honey. So I just kind of smeared the honey onto a slip and stapled it to my test. Then, there were two mass spectra graphs, which is quite often the hardest part of the test. One of them was relatively easy, but the other was almost impossible to decipher because of the large number of different peaks. Then, we had to match up DNA which was very simple, and the crime scene DNA matched exactly with the DNA of a chicken. After that, there were some various pictures of "physical evidence" which was definitely the weirdest part of the test. There were pictures of feathers and bird tracks on the test, but no questions to go along with them. There was also a station set up with more physical evidence, like soil that had a dead cockroach, some random feathers, a dead mouse that was floating in solution in a beaker, and then some random bones. Now, since the only question that the test had asked was to identify the bones, I focused on them. They were clearly not the bones of a chicken, even though that's what the rest of the evidence pointed to. The bones had a couple of vertebrae, a leg bone, and some kind of hip bone or pelvis. The mouth of the skull had only 2 teeth that weren't missing, and it clearly had molars. Now, chickens definitely DO NOT have molars, so we were completely stumped. Bone analysis is definitely NOT a part of the test, and most of the teams I talked to just put down chicken even though the bones provided were clearly not from a chicken. My team put down cat, but after researching more skulls, we think it might have been a fox skull, which has absolutely nothing to do with the forensics event. So from breaking the rules to not providing proper microscopes to adding in aspects that had absolutely nothing to do with forensics, this was definitely the worst test I had ever taken.

...wow, that's quite unusual

[Panda Weasley]

Wow I definitely have a bad event story!

So the Kansas State Tournament was this past Saturday, and the Forensics event was absolutely horrible.
First of all, there was no description of a crime, no suspects or murder or anything. It just said "you found bones behind your garage. Identify them." And that was it. Now, there were 7 powders, which was about normal, 3 hairs, 2 fibers, and 1 plastic. Besides the powders, those numbers were extremely low for samples. So I thought it would be pretty easy, but boy was I wrong. As I tried to identify the hairs, I realized that they had been put on dissection micrscopes instead of compound ones, which did NOT have a high enough magnification to actually identify the hairs. The hairs that they used were definitetly dog and cat hair, which is not allowed in the rules. After flipping to the next page, that's where it got weird. The next page wanted us to identify a "sticky substance" that came from a honeycomb. They had provided us with a beaker full of what was clearly honey, and we were supposed to somehow do chromatography with it. I looked it up later on- you cannot do paper chromatography with honey. So I just kind of smeared the honey onto a slip and stapled it to my test. Then, there were two mass spectra graphs, which is quite often the hardest part of the test. One of them was relatively easy, but the other was almost impossible to decipher because of the large number of different peaks. Then, we had to match up DNA which was very simple, and the crime scene DNA matched exactly with the DNA of a chicken. After that, there were some various pictures of "physical evidence" which was definitely the weirdest part of the test. There were pictures of feathers and bird tracks on the test, but no questions to go along with them. There was also a station set up with more physical evidence, like soil that had a dead cockroach, some random feathers, a dead mouse that was floating in solution in a beaker, and then some random bones. Now, since the only question that the test had asked was to identify the bones, I focused on them. They were clearly not the bones of a chicken, even though that's what the rest of the evidence pointed to. The bones had a couple of vertebrae, a leg bone, and some kind of hip bone or pelvis. The mouth of the skull had only 2 teeth that weren't missing, and it clearly had molars. Now, chickens definitely DO NOT have molars, so we were completely stumped. Bone analysis is definitely NOT a part of the test, and most of the teams I talked to just put down chicken even though the bones provided were clearly not from a chicken. My team put down cat, but after researching more skulls, we think it might have been a fox skull, which has absolutely nothing to do with the forensics event. So from breaking the rules to not providing proper microscopes to adding in aspects that had absolutely nothing to do with forensics, this was definitely the worst test I had ever taken.

...wow, that's quite unusual

How did they mess it up that badly???

[alleycat03]

How did they mess it up that badly???

I honestly have no clue. It was an atrocious test. The worst part is that this wasn't an invitational. This was at state. So our chance at going to nationals was at stake. Luckily, we still managed to win state even with a very low placing in Forensics because of that test.

[Skink]

Did you not arbitrate that? I could see that mess being thrown out of team scores at an invitational, let alone a State tournament where National bids are at stake, yikes...if nothing else, I hope your coach expressed your concerns to the tournament director afterwards so that this individual never runs the event again. I admit that I'm amused trying to imagine what this set-up looked like; I mean, a fox skull, really?