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Anything that is not explicitly stated is not permitted.

I had this discussion with my coach last week. Last year, I believe, notes were allowed, this year they aren't. There's not that much you really need to know anyway. Just memorize the rubric and you'll do fine.

zyzzyva98 wrote:I had this discussion with my coach last week. Last year, I believe, notes were allowed, this year they aren't. There's not that much you really need to know anyway. Just memorize the rubric and you'll do fine.

As far as I know, notes have never been allowed, but they've never really been needed, either.

there is not much that you should need the notes for, everyone know what they are going to need to do [ie different areas of the experiment] so I don't think that notes should be needed as long as you practice writing up good lab reports.

Well, you might need notes for things like how to set up a hypothesis or something, but if you're in this event you should kinda know how to do that...

You really shouldn't need notes for anything. We learned all this in seventh grade Life Science. It's not that hard to remember everything.

I think we all agree about that, though...

No notes is the only way to make this a real compaction would it be fair to give you a test that had all of the exact things that you need to do. If we were allowed notes everyone should get 100%. It is my opinion that the scoring separation at state in this event is so close [5 points could separate 1 from 12th place] that’s always how it seams to be at Michigan's State anyway. Each year I do a self score and come up with on avg 52/64 on the write up. Every year it seams that I never get enough time to complete the experiment when working in a group of 3. Does anyone else feel that they could run and complete an experiment by their self than what can be done with your team members? The sad thing is for me that is a true fact one of our try out events was to do this event. I got a full experiment done scoring 50/64 all done in the 50 minutes, and the next closes person scored 32/64.

I find that it can be more help full to give my teammates blank reports and have them write up their own reports so that we can go over them as a group.

packer-backer91 wrote:If we were allowed notes everyone should get 100%.

Only if the experiment given is very obvious and the judges are very, very lenient. Simply knowing what you have to write doesn't tell you what experiment to do, or how to analyze it, or what real-life situations it applies to, or what the scientific background of your experiment is. There's more to this event than just knowing the rubric and regurgitating it on cue.

packer-backer91 wrote:It is my opinion that the scoring separation at state in this event is so close [5 points could separate 1 from 12th place] that’s always how it seams to be at Michigan's State anyway. Each year I do a self score and come up with on avg 52/64 on the write up.

I don't think this is representative of scores in this event across the country. Also, it is extremely difficult to come up with an accurate score for yourself; you don't know what you left out, or else you would have put it in, and you don't know exactly what the judge is looking for- they do not always use the same rubric.

packer-backer91 wrote:I find that it can be more help full to give my teammates blank reports and have them write up their own reports so that we can go over them as a group.

This is an inefficient use of your time. Instead, try separating the report into three sections- if you're convinced that you're significantly more efficient than your teammates, give yourself the largest section- and then combining them at the end. The procedure and materials can be written concurrently with the completion of the experiment, as can some later sections- possible sources of experimental error, and recommendations for future experimentation (or whatever those correspond to on the specific rubric for that event). By the time whoever's writing those sections is finished, the experiment should also be finished, and they can proceed to the sections that depend on your results- statistics, analysis, etc. This way, you never have two people working on the same thing, allowing you to finish much faster and possibly even have time to go over each other's work.

Phenylethylamine wrote:

packer-backer91 wrote:I find that it can be more help full to give my teammates blank reports and have them write up their own reports so that we can go over them as a group.

This is an inefficient use of your time. Instead, try separating the report into three sections- if you're convinced that you're significantly more efficient than your teammates, give yourself the largest section- and then combining them at the end. The procedure and materials can be written concurrently with the completion of the experiment, as can some later sections- possible sources of experimental error, and recommendations for future experimentation (or whatever those correspond to on the specific rubric for that event). By the time whoever's writing those sections is finished, the experiment should also be finished, and they can proceed to the sections that depend on your results- statistics, analysis, etc. This way, you never have two people working on the same thing, allowing you to finish much faster and possibly even have time to go over each other's work.

I think he's talking about practice...

Hi. How have you been preparing yourselves for this event? I am so nervous, due to the fact that is completely on the spot. Any tips?