Scioly.org

no, put rocks with way different porosity's in the tube, then they can see the difference.

honeybunchesofoats wrote:

TYG wrote:At our state tournament, my partner and I lost points on porosity for not providing a demonstration relevant to the aquifer, because we measured porosity in two beakers separate from the aquifer. Does anyone know how we could get around doing so, while still demonstrating porosity?

Did you use the same rocks from the aquifer for the tube?

No, we didn't. We used beads of difference sizes but the same spherical shape to show porosity. If we did use the same rocks, do you think it would have ended up differently?

Fossil Freak 25 wrote:no, put rocks with way different porosity's in the tube, then they can see the difference.

Thank you both for your help.

ignore this. meant to edit but accidentally quoted. Sorry.

So how was awesome aquifers at nats?

It was so-so, not so hard, but the images were better labelled than before. There were many concepts (no remediation!), and my partner and I finished in 8 minutes. I didn't really like any of the tests I took that much.

There were a lot of concepts :/

Well, Aquifers is leaving next year, so here are my thoughts on it:

1) It wasn't as organized in comparison to other events, and there wasn't that much info on soinc.org, which made you have to navigate groundwater.org, which isn't as familiar to me.

2) Every test we took was too easy, and it really came down to tiebreakers most of the time. There's not that much to learn about aquifers; we knew everything/mostly everything on the Nationals test and we got 34th.

3) The presentation section wasn't as sincere as I might have expected when I started doing it. The teams who got better scores were the one's that had practiced more, not necessarily those who had a complete understanding of aquifers. The concepts were not that complicated, and I didn't like that they were listed online. In my opinion, I would have liked it to be more of a "think on your feet" event, which would show what teams had the full understanding of it.

4) Having said that, I thought that through the presentation, I learned a lot, and it was a great way to give a visual representation of an aquifer and the surrounding area/aspects.

5) I don't do Dynamic Planet, but I felt that the event had all of the information contained in Dynamic Planet, but Dynamic Planet doesn't have all of the information contained in Aquifers. Especially this year, since the focus topic for Dynamic Planet was Freshwater.

6) Every competition I went to, the event was extremely organized and well run, and it seemed it was easy to run too. The organization of the event is a great aspect of Awesome Aquifers.

Please don't take offense to any of this, it's just my opinion. Overall, I would say that it was a fun event, but a little too easy.

havenguy wrote:Well, Aquifers is leaving next year, so here are my thoughts on it:

1) It wasn't as organized in comparison to other events, and there wasn't that much info on soinc.org, which made you have to navigate groundwater.org, which isn't as familiar to me.

2) Every test we took was too easy, and it really came down to tiebreakers most of the time. There's not that much to learn about aquifers; we knew everything/mostly everything on the Nationals test and we got 34th.

3) The presentation section wasn't as sincere as I might have expected when I started doing it. The teams who got better scores were the one's that had practiced more, not necessarily those who had a complete understanding of aquifers. The concepts were not that complicated, and I didn't like that they were listed online. In my opinion, I would have liked it to be more of a "think on your feet" event, which would show what teams had the full understanding of it.

4) Having said that, I thought that through the presentation, I learned a lot, and it was a great way to give a visual representation of an aquifer and the surrounding area/aspects.

5) I don't do Dynamic Planet, but I felt that the event had all of the information contained in Dynamic Planet, but Dynamic Planet doesn't have all of the information contained in Aquifers. Especially this year, since the focus topic for Dynamic Planet was Freshwater.

6) Every competition I went to, the event was extremely organized and well run, and it seemed it was easy to run too. The organization of the event is a great aspect of Awesome Aquifers.

Please don't take offense to any of this, it's just my opinion. Overall, I would say that it was a fun event, but a little too easy.

I mostly agree with you, except I'd like to add on to the belief that aquifers is too easy. For the most part, the demonstration is more practice than knowledge. However for the tests, there can be stuff related to hydraulic head and groundwater flow that has advanced math involved, which could separate the less prepared from the more prepared. But when you're given 10 multiple choice questions about the water cycle / what is an aquifer, the test really does come down to tiebreakers.