Reach for the Stars B

[bernard]

[thesaga]

Hello! RFTS was retracted from my regionals comp this year and I just started making the cheat sheet for states but does anyone have any tips on how much info to put on the dso's, what formulas to include, how to format, etc?

[thesaga]

P.S. I placed last year but my cheat sheet was terrible, I want to make sure that does not happen again.

[Sorrow2]

How can I try and identify DSO's when given a gravitational wave graph?

[Voyager3]

I like using google docs with 2 columns. I usually make one full page of text and then one page of mostly images. To identify the images quickly, I use some sort of image editor to put the names of the objects directly on top of the images that I use in the note sheet. For formulas, definitely add Weins Law and the Stephan-Boltzmann Law, as I have noticed they are used a considerable amount on tests. Kepler's Lawa and Newtons laws are always good to have if you get them mixed up like me, and the luminosity formula, Schwarzschild radius formula, and the vis-viva equation are generally useful as well. I did not do this, but I would definitely recommend labeling each image that you have with the telescope that took the image. The tests have many of these questions and every once and awhile you might encounter an exact match to one on your note sheet. I generally add a table of alternative names to objects on the rules, and finally, just a table of notable stars and objects in each of the 88 constellations just in case a random question pops up. Additionally, one of the most important things to memorize for this event is the life cycle of different stars, as you don't want to be checking your note sheet repeatedly for the many multiple choice questions that pop up.

[thesaga]

Hello! RFTS was retracted from my regionals comp this year and I just started making the cheat sheet for states but does anyone have any tips on how much info to put on the dso's, what formulas to include, how to format, etc?

When I did Solar System (which is similar to RFTS in that ID is an important part of the event), I had several columns of very small images, organized into "blocks" based on what feature/object they were. Underneath each "block" of images in each column, I had a text box that had captions for each image in the block (e.g. "Top layer right: XYZ crater, Top layer left: ABC crater"). All of this was with Word 2007 with Arial Narrow 2.5. The trick here is to not use any of the built-in columns. Instead, I just made a bunch of text boxes and arranged them in a column. Then, I type everything into the text boxes. This way, I can have a lot more control over it, and I can easily move them around however I like. It also makes things a lot easier when you have a lot of images, since as long as you set the text wrapping to "in front of text" for the images, you can move them around freely without disrupting any text in the text boxes.

Based on my experience event supervising for RFTS, I think a similar approach could be useful here. Here are some screenshots of my old Solar System notes: