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prelude to death wrote:Wait, so if I do bring a 5 inch binder (on the off chance that I actually find one and decide to use it), I should make a lot of tabs and stuff, right? (And also, for the field guide, are we allowed to write in it? And for tabs, is it a limit of three words per tab like some other event rules I've seen? Sorry that I'm asking so many questions.... I just really want to know about the event because it seems really cool to me.... )

I don't think that the exact rules are definite yet; we're just basing our assumptions off of the rules for the trial event Rocks and Minerals.

*nodnod* I've looked at the rules, but I'm just asking Gneiss and anyone else who happens to have participated in the event before what they experienced and how it was run and what the rules were when they competed.

prelude to death wrote:Wait, so if I do bring a 5 inch binder (on the off chance that I actually find one and decide to use it), I should make a lot of tabs and stuff, right? (And also, for the field guide, are we allowed to write in it? And for tabs, is it a limit of three words per tab like some other event rules I've seen? Sorry that I'm asking so many questions.... I just really want to know about the event because it seems really cool to me.... )

Hmm I don't know if there are any rules about writing in the field guide. We never really used the field guide we brought much since my binder had everything we needed; the only use it got was when another team had forgotten theirs so we let them borrow our field guide.

We did tab it up though. You should definitely tab your binders, whether it's 5 inch or 1 inch. I made alphabetical tabs for the minerals so I could flip to the ones I wanted quickly, but you can of course sort them in other ways (such as mineral group, crystal structure, hardness, etc., though I find alphabetical the fastest). I don't recall any restrictions on tabbing.

This really excites me. I have been interested in geology all my life and it wil be nice to compete in an event that is all about that kind of thing.

hmmm, so if i want to get a head start, would it be a good idea to look at the 2006 or something year, (last time r&m was an event) list?

I'm pretty sure its the 2008 list.

tuftedtitmouse12 wrote:hmmm, so if i want to get a head start, would it be a good idea to look at the 2006 or something year, (last time r&m was an event) list?

Yeah, I can't imagine the list changing drastically since then, if at all.

Do they provide scratch plates at every station? A lot of ones look very similar.

quizbowl wrote:Do they provide scratch plates at every station? A lot of ones look very similar.

They should, yeah. You're not allowed to bring your own, if I remember correctly, so they need to provide glass and a streak plate at every station. They can choose to provide HCl as well so you can tell if it's a carbonate like calcite or aragonite, but they don't have to provide that.

But honestly, the ones that look most similar also have similar hardnesses (olvine and epidote, chalcopyrite and bornite, celestite and barite, etc.). Otherwise, you can pretty much tell by looking what it is, hardness is really only useful for telling apart the hexagonal crystals (apatite won't scratch glass while beryl and corundum will REALLY scratch class).

I'm really excited for this event next year - I was already studying on the plane ride home!
I was thinking of doing a video log this summer on what I'd studied. The videos would be in a lecture style, similar to khanacademy and such. i'd really like to know if anybody's interested in watching a series like that uploaded onto youtube, or if there's specific you'd like me to cover / talk about.