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1st @ Regionals, 3rd @ States, though with two more minutes I'm certain we could have gotten first at state (giving us the points we needed to go to Nats...) This is a great example of how time management is crucial to the event.

zyzzyva98 wrote:1st @ Regionals, 3rd @ States, though with two more minutes I'm certain we could have gotten first at state (giving us the points we needed to go to Nats...) This is a great example of how time management is crucial to the event.

Don't beat yourself up. The difference between first and third in an event is never the single reason behind an overall place, even if two points were all you needed.

[anecdote]I got DQ'ed in WIDI at States (stupid mistake), and I was all worried that those 56 points were the difference between first and second for us (we were 44 points behind the first place team). After a former coach of mine asked around, though, we found out that because WIDI was so close, even our almost-perfect score would've only been somewhere in the 13-15 place range if we hadn't gotten DQ'ed. So in the end it turned out the WIDI place, though making up a lot of those 44 points, wasn't actually the sole difference between getting first and getting second overall.[/anecdote]

But yes, you took the right lesson away from that. Time management is crucial to the event.

I posted some tips to do your best in Experimental Design on the wiki, which was then edited by hftf. However I advise along with that, to always make sure that things that you are not supposed to have are NO WHERE near you. (I got DQed at states and it wasn't even our rubric.)

trajectoryroxs wrote:I posted some tips to do your best in Experimental Design on the wiki, which was then edited by hftf. However I advise along with that, to always make sure that things that you are not supposed to have are NO WHERE near you. (I got DQed at states and it wasn't even our rubric.)

Agreed.

For the sake of all things good and chocolaty, TURN OFF YOUR PHONES.

We've never had any issues with phones on our team, but I'm always worried that it'll happen someday.

We wound up getting 17th, which is fine, but I have to say that that test was not good. They gave us a jar of iodine and 5 snack foods, and we watched the snack foods change color. On paper this sounds ok, but it was not. They gave us peanuts as a snack food, and one person who had an allergy was forced to leave. I just don't understand how nuts could be used ever in this event,especially at nationals.

Our school ended up getting 3rd for Experimental. Great job everyone!

eyeball138 wrote:We wound up getting 17th, which is fine, but I have to say that that test was not good. They gave us a jar of iodine and 5 snack foods, and we watched the snack foods change color. On paper this sounds ok, but it was not. They gave us peanuts as a snack food, and one person who had an allergy was forced to leave. I just don't understand how nuts could be used ever in this event,especially at nationals.

That's a really weird topic. I would have never thought that they would use peanuts because of all the allergies...so that kid could't compete? that really stinks. Does anyone know what the topic and the materials that they gave division c was?

eyeball138 wrote:We wound up getting 17th, which is fine, but I have to say that that test was not good. They gave us a jar of iodine and 5 snack foods, and we watched the snack foods change color. On paper this sounds ok, but it was not. They gave us peanuts as a snack food, and one person who had an allergy was forced to leave. I just don't understand how nuts could be used ever in this event,especially at nationals.

I heard about that, that's terrible The C Division event was run a little better, fortunately. We were told to run an experiment that showed a change in heart rate and a return to resting rate (and not including the "return to resting rate" part would lead to being second-tiered). We were told that we didn't have to use any of the materials given (which consisted of ice water "to create stress" and I think one other thing, but I don't remember what), but could just use our own bodies/stopwatches/etc. We did number of consecutive push-ups versus time for heart rate to return to resting rate. We thought it went really well, but we ended up getting 22nd (I can, in retrospect, think of a few things we may have done wrong, but even so, I feel like we should have done better than that).

eyeball138 wrote:We wound up getting 17th, which is fine, but I have to say that that test was not good. They gave us a jar of iodine and 5 snack foods, and we watched the snack foods change color. On paper this sounds ok, but it was not. They gave us peanuts as a snack food, and one person who had an allergy was forced to leave. I just don't understand how nuts could be used ever in this event,especially at nationals.

It was one of our Fulton Science students who had to leave. We coaches and parents were livid when we found out. His parents take so many precautions to keep him safe and then the one place that you wouldn't think would be a danger he is confronted with peanuts. He had to go into another room while our other 2 students did the experiment, then they were sent into the room he was in to do the write up, never mind that they still could have had peanut residue on their clothes... incredibly, amazing stupid, thoughtless, careless and dangerous. And no mention by the event supervisor that they would be using nuts at the coaches meeting the night before.

Phenylethylamine wrote:

eyeball138 wrote:We wound up getting 17th, which is fine, but I have to say that that test was not good. They gave us a jar of iodine and 5 snack foods, and we watched the snack foods change color. On paper this sounds ok, but it was not. They gave us peanuts as a snack food, and one person who had an allergy was forced to leave. I just don't understand how nuts could be used ever in this event,especially at nationals.

I heard about that, that's terrible The C Division event was run a little better, fortunately. We were told to run an experiment that showed a change in heart rate and a return to resting rate (and not including the "return to resting rate" part would lead to being second-tiered). We were told that we didn't have to use any of the materials given (which consisted of ice water "to create stress" and I think one other thing, but I don't remember what), but could just use our own bodies/stopwatches/etc. We did number of consecutive push-ups versus time for heart rate to return to resting rate. We thought it went really well, but we ended up getting 22nd (I can, in retrospect, think of a few things we may have done wrong, but even so, I feel like we should have done better than that).

Agreed - though it was strange, I thought it was actually quite alright. We were a bit worried about whether they would think ours fit their requirements for first tier, since it was fairly unclear, I though, but it ended up okay and we got 9th. We did number of consecutive jumping jacks vs. time to return to resting rate (I know a bunch of other people did this too, but I can happily say I was the first in the room on my feet to start doing it). We were hoping for a little better than that, and I think experimental at nationals just gets really bunched towards the top - people come in very prepared, and they have (seemingly) been grading it strangely. Congrats to Penncrest for defending their title. I really wish they had put in the scoring guide or gold medal paper from last year into the test booklet, since it'd be nice to see what exactly it is that Penncrest has done that the nationals people seem to like (we beat them at both regionals and states, but clearly something about their style works well at nationals). Still - hard to complain!