Poorly Run Event Stories

[sciolylover13]

At an invitational I recently went to:
Crime Busters: there was only one bottle of iodine, about 4 bottles of HCl, and a jug of distilled water (you had to fill your own water). This was for about 30 teams. The event supervisors told us to share and to only use 1 drop of each liquid for each test. That's not exactly possible if you want to identify the unknown...
We were out of iodine in about 20 minutes, no one could find the HCl (thankfully, I was able to get a bottle for my partner and I...Don't worry, we shared ), and no one had a cup to put the distilled water in.

On top of all that, the test was copied straight from the North Carolina Science Olympiad Website. Somehow, we still managed to get 2nd...

All my other events were fairly well run.

[samlan16]

At an invitational I recently went to:
Crime Busters: there was only one bottle of iodine, about 4 bottles of HCl, and a jug of distilled water (you had to fill your own water). This was for about 30 teams. The event supervisors told us to share and to only use 1 drop of each liquid for each test. That's not exactly possible if you want to identify the unknown...
We were out of iodine in about 20 minutes, no one could find the HCl (thankfully, I was able to get a bottle for my partner and I...Don't worry, we shared ), and no one had a cup to put the distilled water in.

On top of all that, the test was copied straight from the North Carolina Science Olympiad Website. Somehow, we still managed to get 2nd...

All my other events were fairly well run.

What's sad is that my students said it was easy and did not mention this.

[sciolylover13]

At an invitational I recently went to:
Crime Busters: there was only one bottle of iodine, about 4 bottles of HCl, and a jug of distilled water (you had to fill your own water). This was for about 30 teams. The event supervisors told us to share and to only use 1 drop of each liquid for each test. That's not exactly possible if you want to identify the unknown...
We were out of iodine in about 20 minutes, no one could find the HCl (thankfully, I was able to get a bottle for my partner and I...Don't worry, we shared ), and no one had a cup to put the distilled water in.

On top of all that, the test was copied straight from the North Carolina Science Olympiad Website. Somehow, we still managed to get 2nd...

All my other events were fairly well run.

What's sad is that my students said it was easy and did not mention this.

Wow. It was an easy test, in terms of powders, metals, liquids, fingerprints, and shoeprints... stuff like that. Chromatography was a bit weird though. I accidentally threw mine away, and had to fish them out of the trash can...

[Verdigris]

I'm going to call myself out here- I recently wrote a Hydrogeology test for an invitational that our school held last Saturday. When I went to grade it, I ended up having to throw the first half of Part 3 out, because I was fairly sure I had determined the answers for the answer key the wrong way and I had no idea how to figure out the correct answers. O_O' I don't think it would have changed the placings by much if I had done it correctly, but still something that I need to figure out how to do. ^_^

[JonB]

I'm going to call myself out here- I recently wrote a Hydrogeology test for an invitational that our school held last Saturday. When I went to grade it, I ended up having to throw the first half of Part 3 out, because I was fairly sure I had determined the answers for the answer key the wrong way and I had no idea how to figure out the correct answers. O_O' I don't think it would have changed the placings by much if I had done it correctly, but still something that I need to figure out how to do. ^_^

What invitational did your high school hold if you are located in Florida?

[Verdigris]

Lake Nona High School- it's in the Central Florida area. Only 6 teams attended anyway (and 4 of them were all from the same school). XD

[windu34]

Lake Nona High School- it's in the Central Florida area. Only 6 teams attended anyway (and 4 of them were all from the same school). XD

Did you guys advertise on the forum or on the Florida science Olympiad website? Seeing as how there are so few invites held in Florida, if more people knew about it, you would definitely have higher attendance.

[Fluorine]

Lake Nona High School- it's in the Central Florida area. Only 6 teams attended anyway (and 4 of them were all from the same school). XD

Did you guys advertise on the forum or on the Florida science Olympiad website? Seeing as how there are so few invites held in Florida, if more people knew about it, you would definitely have higher attendance.

Yea you would have got a good amount of teams since you would be the only division C invite in Florida. I know for a fact our team would definitely consider going since realistically it would be easier to bring everyone from the team to a Florida invite than compared to going to MIT for example.

[_deltaV]

Oh man do I have some stories. States for Florida is a crapshoot in terms of events and quality

1. Florida states is a crapshoot in terms of supervisors and quality. Forensics cancelled because the proctor didn't know the event and just didn't show up. Astronomy used the same test on the forums which we had saved. Wright Stuff was done in the same gym as Elastic Launched Glider and mousetrap car I believe so the clear competition airspace for Wright Stuff was like 1/3 of the turn radius of my plane, not to mention A/C on full blast and an extremely drafty gym where the air pressure dropped noticeably when the door was opened. In addition to that, ELG hitting wright stuff, ELG wins. Just sketchy all around. For Boomilever 2 years ago, the supervisor was just casually bumping his hip on the table. I didn't notice it because competition tunnel vision, but when I saw the video my coach took, it broke as soon as he bumped the table. Still placed second though.

2. MIT. This might sound petty but using pens as stabilizing sticks for Bridges was just sketchy.

[windu34]

FLORIDA:
At regionals, ES for Scrambler div C decided to choose 12.5m for the distance (rules specify 9-12m)

Not a poorly run event story, but at states for scrambler, a team who did not build a scrambler launcher brought a shovel and a toy car and proceeded to whack the car with the shovel. Not only did they break both the egg and their car on the first smack, I believe they managed to hit another teams device with their egg (that team had already competed thankfully)

Air trajectory at states: The ES decided that "Racquetball, Tennis ball, Ping Pong ball, and/or practice plastic golf ball" meant that it was optional for the golf ball to be plastic. Two teams brought foam balls and were allowed to compete without losing any points. Arbitrations were submitted so I don't quite know for sure what ended up happening.