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Chemistry Lab (5th) - Almost as long as Nationals, as usual. Lab was basic calorimetry, and like before there were a lot of pretty creative questions that pushed your knowledge to the limit. Overall well run, and the test was fun although, as always, in no way indicative of performances for the rest of the year.

Hovercraft (7th) - The track was pure sheet metal and thus really troll, super slippery so it was pretty difficult to go very slow. We managed to get really lucky and janked out the time score super hard. The test was pretty decent, although the fluid mechanics questions were pretty ridiculous (some Wind Power-esque stuff in there lol). I could have medaled if I had tried checking my answers more but I'm bad :/

Optics (19th) - Test was pretty good, straightforward with a couple of curveballs but nothing too esoteric (other than maybe Fabry-Perot cavities lol) The laser setup, however, was not that great - the mirrors were covered in tape and this resulted in the bottom front edge not being flush or even parallel with the actual mirrors. We set the mirrors up perfectly but the variation in angle from the tape made our laser completely miss the 4th mirror and caused us to get a laser score of 21 :/ Very salty

Also, is MIT not releasing scoresheets?

Astronomy (1): Well done, as always, although on the easier (and much shorter!) side, especially when compared to last year's nationals (and MIT) test. However, still a lot of cool and new information and was a pleasure to take. I wish there was more conceptual/research papers stuff like last year's (it was mainly DSOs/categorizing and math this year), but they might be starting out easy since it's the first year of this topic. I thought the categorizing towards the end of part I was really great and the math problems were pretty interesting, for the most part. Slightly off topic, but it was nice of them (and everyone else in the time block) to start a bit later since I was around 10 minutes late due to hovercraft impound taking a while.

WIDI (2): Excellently done. This structure was pretty hard and time consuming for both the writer and doer (contrasted with last year's structure, which was an incredibly short and easy k'nex structure). I thought the ripped paper parts were pretty creative and the string was a pain to deal with (which is good, as it makes it a hard structure!). The drawing was a nice addition, as it is rarely tested, too. Another small touch I liked was how when you finished, you put your structure in another room (instead of out in the open like last year), keeping people from looking at other's completed structures. All in all, a great structure and a very well run event.

Picture This (2): Run perfectly fine. Words felt fairly hard, but that's mainly because a lot of them were biology related and I'm abysmal at biology

Hovercraft (5): The proctors were incredibly knowledgeable and competent for this and it was overall a great experience. The tracks were really well set up, although the metal track did mess my timing up a lot (which isn't the proctors' fault at all, of course); overall, the building/testing part was flawless. The test was harder than any other hovercraft test I had seen before which was pretty awesome (but not impossibly hard by any stretch). It felt like there was a disproportionately high amount of fluids/water/hydraulics type questions and rotational motion and not enough basic mechanics/dynamics etc, but all in all, the test was fine. Nationals will be in good hands with these same people running it.

Optics (15): The test was fine, although it included some fairly obscure stuff at times (which isn't necessarily a bad thing). I'll never really understand why significant figures are important in an event like optics though; you only got half credit if you didn't use correct sig figs. The laser shoot was run fairly well, for the most part (the proctor had a really cool camera and computer setup to measure distances and stuff), but the build of the actual LSSs tripped my partner and I up. We align mirrors by holding templates and rulers against the sides of the LSS, but there were gaps between the bottom and the sides of the LSS, meaning that the rulers and templates would slide in the gaps and therefore not measure angles correctly, since they weren't aligned to a straight edge. This was a huge, huge problem for my partner and I and ended up messing up our laser shoot quite a bit, since we had to eyeball a lot of stuff. Additionally, the covers for the mirrors were a hassle to work with (since they got in the way a lot when aligning the mirrors), but I liked that they were very easy to remove, reducing the chances of the mirrors unintentionally shifting positions when the competitors have to remove the covers once time is up.

kenniky wrote:Also, is MIT not releasing scoresheets?

There's the avogadro one, but that's not really a printable scoresheet or anything. However, there is an unofficial one thanks to Unome/Chattahoochee

Anatomy (2nd): Pretty good test. Tested certain parts like general senses too much, but it touched on most systems. Multiple choice was tricky and most questions were well written. I would've preferred more disease questions, but they were sufficient. 60 minutes were given, and the test was not very long, so time was not a problem. The grading, however, contained numerous mistakes due both to human error and answer key errors.

Ecology (1st): Incredibly difficult test, since most questions were either short answer or multiple multiple choice (no partial credit). Lots of nitpicky stuff like random acronym names and obscure information made the test really hard to finish. True/false questions tested understanding of concepts really well. Overall, a unique test that's harder than any other ecology or green generation test I've taken.

Experimental Design (1st): Unique experiment as far as I've done. The laser pointer was fun to play around with Write-up was done without a template, which is nice because of more freedom to write. No glitches.

Microbe Mission (1st): Well written test. Test started out easy and got progressively more difficult. Most questions were typical of a microbe test, some interesting disease sections. Has a bit too much immune system for a microbe test The immune system chart had either/or answers with questions that nobody actually knew, which made much of the score difference random.

Adi1008 wrote:

kenniky wrote:Also, is MIT not releasing scoresheets?

There's the avogadro one, but that's not really a printable scoresheet or anything. However, there is an unofficial one thanks to Unome/Chattahoochee

I meant like individual build scoresheets, so we can see how others did. EV, Helicopters, Hovercraft, Optics, Robot Arm, and Towers all have scoresheets and I would have liked to know how we fared versus the other teams (and how much the stupid Optics laser shoot cost us >:( )

kenniky wrote:

Adi1008 wrote:

kenniky wrote:Also, is MIT not releasing scoresheets?

There's the avogadro one, but that's not really a printable scoresheet or anything. However, there is an unofficial one thanks to Unome/Chattahoochee

I meant like individual build scoresheets, so we can see how others did. EV, Helicopters, Hovercraft, Optics, Robot Arm, and Towers all have scoresheets and I would have liked to know how we fared versus the other teams (and how much the stupid Optics laser shoot cost us >:( )

Ive already asked. They wont give them out

windu34 wrote:

kenniky wrote:

Adi1008 wrote:
There's the avogadro one, but that's not really a printable scoresheet or anything. However, there is an unofficial one thanks to Unome/Chattahoochee

I meant like individual build scoresheets, so we can see how others did. EV, Helicopters, Hovercraft, Optics, Robot Arm, and Towers all have scoresheets and I would have liked to know how we fared versus the other teams (and how much the stupid Optics laser shoot cost us >:( )

Ive already asked. They wont give them out

That's weird, any reasoning? They've given them out in previous years :/

kenniky wrote:

windu34 wrote:

kenniky wrote: I meant like individual build scoresheets, so we can see how others did. EV, Helicopters, Hovercraft, Optics, Robot Arm, and Towers all have scoresheets and I would have liked to know how we fared versus the other teams (and how much the stupid Optics laser shoot cost us >:( )

Ive already asked. They wont give them out

That's weird, any reasoning? They've given them out in previous years :/

Yeah, this is definitely one of the weaker points of the tournament. Most invitationals here in Georgia give back raw scores for every event (in fact, the state tournament at Emory gives back raw scores and teams' tests, and apparently hasn't had any problems),

Astronomy - it was fun and short. Most things made sense, except for the Mira wavelength question, image 19, and zz ceti. Also our spectral type table was off from the graders and we got -3 points for that...

Microbe - hard. I should have done better though

Hovercraft - I need to build one.. but it never works. Test was a lot of fluid mechanics :0

Hi all,

I was the ES for Hovercraft at MIT. I wrote the test and ran check-in at impound. The National event supervisor also came to the event; he supplied the tracks (which were admittedly slippery, but all identical to each other). In the interest of preserving the competitiveness of high-performing teams I won't give out individual raw scores, but I will show a plot of the scores for the device and test:

I competed in Maglev back in 2012(trial at nats), 2013, and 2014, so I know the pain of trying to make a vehicle go slowly over an unpredictable track. This was my second year as an ES at MIT (I proctored geologic mapping last year).

blakinator8 wrote:Hi all,

I was the ES for Hovercraft at MIT. I wrote the test and ran check-in at impound. The National event supervisor also came to the event; he supplied the tracks (which were admittedly slippery, but all identical to each other). In the interest of preserving the competitiveness of high-performing teams I won't give out individual raw scores, but I will show a plot of the scores for the device and test:

[big img]

I competed in Maglev back in 2012(trial at nats), 2013, and 2014, so I know the pain of trying to make a vehicle go slowly over an unpredictable track. This was my second year as an ES at MIT (I proctored geologic mapping last year).

Are the exam scores the space between orange and blue, or from the bottom to the orange?

Also, yo! I've competed in both of your events then. Nice! (RIP Geomap :( )