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frogzorz wrote:This may sound redundant, but that event supervisor from nationals was a super-d****e. She disqualified a person (I forgot your username, sorry!) for rubbing their eye inside their goggles! Most people aren't perfect! We might forget stuff even if it's Nationals and extremely important.

Do you know if it was this year that the team got disqualified? What place did they get?

It was this year at nationals I was in the room when it happened.
I believe it was a NY team and they filed an appeal which overruled the DQ. They where up near the top I believe

I'm pretty sure they got 14th.

haven chuck wrote:Absolutely not. It may mean that in order to answer the question (and get the full 5 points), you have to make an inference from your observation, but a good test/test grader would never dock points because you made an observation and not an inference. The [wiki]Can't Judge A Powder[/wiki] has a good section on writing proper observations if you need more clarification on what is and isn't allowed.

According to this link provided on the CJAP soinc event info page, in order to get a full 5 points for your observation, you must infer in the observation to demonstrate your knowledge in the difference between an observation and an inference. The example the link provides as a 5 point observation is: "When .2 grams of the powder was dissolved in 3 ml of DI the temperature decreased from 23.3°C to 21.8°C thus inferring that dissolving the powder in water is endothermic". Yet, numerous powerpoints clearly state that this is not allowed. Provided with this controversial scoring criteria, what should most supervisors consider as a 5 point observation?

rule book this year says that as a tie breaker or in general if you observe that "when .1g of powder was put into 5mL of water, the powder floats on the water until it is stirred" would recieve the full 5 points vs. if you wrote that the substance floated on water would be 4 points..
I was coaching a group of kids friday when the same question came up. IDK...
wait i just read that again... as for inferring (like therefore it is endothermic) I know when our coaches proctor an event, they take away points for that.

melody2k6 wrote:

haven chuck wrote:Absolutely not. It may mean that in order to answer the question (and get the full 5 points), you have to make an inference from your observation, but a good test/test grader would never dock points because you made an observation and not an inference. The [wiki]Can't Judge A Powder[/wiki] has a good section on writing proper observations if you need more clarification on what is and isn't allowed.

According to this link provided on the CJAP soinc event info page, in order to get a full 5 points for your observation, you must infer in the observation to demonstrate your knowledge in the difference between an observation and an inference. The example the link provides as a 5 point observation is: "When .2 grams of the powder was dissolved in 3 ml of DI the temperature decreased from 23.3°C to 21.8°C thus inferring that dissolving the powder in water is endothermic". Yet, numerous powerpoints clearly state that this is not allowed. Provided with this controversial scoring criteria, what should most supervisors consider as a 5 point observation?

I hadn't seen that before. However, trust the rulebook. The links on soinc specifically say that-

soinc.org-CJAP page wrote:The information below should not be interpreted as an extension of the rules. The official rules in the current Rules Manual take precedence.

hey who won last year...and I know this is a stupid ? to ask since most people probably don't want to help anyone else but will it be helpful to memorize some well know powders...and also have they ever used the same powder more than once at the nationals...(or at any state or regional, for that matter)...if so, which ones are they

You don't have to worry about identifying powders. Knowing what powder you have is not very useful information in this event. So no, that's wouldn't be that helpful. The best help I could give you would be to encourage you to practice often with many different powders and reagents and types of equipment. And make sure that you write down almost everything there is to observe. Null observations are important too.

As for who won last year, that would be haven chuck!

um whose the haven chuch guy...I meant which team...

Haven Chuck is the username of a former student of Strath Haven Middle School.