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First year in Middle school, what will it look like from experience, and how long is it?

Vsauce wrote:First year in Middle school, what will it look like from experience, and how long is it?

Depends what kind of experience you have, I'm assuming you're coming from Div A, I've never been in Div A so I don't know what kind of tests they make. But I'm assuming they're pretty easy.

Solar system in Div B is a pretty hard event. But it talks about a lot of things, sometimes small details. Really small details, that's what you make a cheat sheet for. If you want to see some tests, go to the test exchange or click this link. Test You need to study a lot. Good luck on your first year!

The rules don't say we can use calculators, however some tests I have taken would require the use of a calculator. Would an ES allow it?

arv101 wrote:The rules don't say we can use calculators, however some tests I have taken would require the use of a calculator. Would an ES allow it?

Event supervisors should not be writing tests that require calculators. That said, you could bring a calculator in case the event supervisor allows you to use it.

Vsauce wrote:First year in Middle school, what will it look like from experience, and how long is it?

I nosedived in my sixth-grade year into this event ( wow that was like 4 years ago...).

My team was made of 5 seventh and 10 sixth grade students.

The tests are hard, you most definitely want a cheat sheet, and study your heart out. Both times at state I've taken the test (sixth grade and ninth grade), e my teammate and I teammate were out before the timer was done with, id says Somewhere between 40 and 45 minutes total testing, double and triple checking. all the questions. We brought a red light but ended up not needing it.
It's a lot of IDentification, so knowledge of the characteristics of the objects in the study. (Pictures on cheatsheets help).
We had a decent amount of short answer questions. I remember the one about pancake domes on Venus, which I knew what they were, however, I didn't know how they formed, however, have a decent understanding of how to SWAG it.

In Sixth-Grade, we placed 3rd at the Michigan State Finals
In Ninth Grade we placed 2nd at Michigan State Finals

Hello!
Does the solar system wiki https://scioly.org/wiki/index.php/Solar_System contains all the study information I need for the event? Also, is this https://scioly.org/wiki/images/6/6e/Reg ... b_test.pdf like the style and difficulty for the real event?

Thanks in advance.

P.S This is my first post ever in this forum

AwersomeUser wrote:Hello!
Does the solar system wiki https://scioly.org/wiki/index.php/Solar_System contains all the study information I need for the event? Also, is this https://scioly.org/wiki/images/6/6e/Reg ... b_test.pdf like the style and difficulty for the real event?

Thanks in advance.

P.S This is my first post ever in this forum

Hey! Welcome to the forums, thank you for posting, hopefully I show this place welcomes those question things:D.

For your questions:
-Short answer is no. Long answer is the wiki never contains *all* the information you need and isn't even guaranteed to be correct. It's meant to be a good starting place and gives ideas about how to organize your notes. This forum is student/volunteer-run and not an official resource hosted by soinc.org or anything (soinc.org is the official Science Olympiad website).
-As for that test, every test writer is a little different and can choose to adjust test format and difficulty. That said, AlphaTauri (admin/user/cool person on this website) does know how to write solid tests (though, often tougher than average regionals tests). If you're looking for something more "standard" or "official", you can look on the soinc.org page for Solar System or any event in general. Keep in mind even those can be different from actual competition, but being on the official national website probably helps advertise it to potential writers. The thing with local test writers is that they're all volunteers and situations range from asking someone last minute to actual experts in the field.

I can explain these points more if you don't know what any of that means, and I hope that helps.

Oh ok thanks. That was quick.

Also, I have not started studying for the event yet. I have almost zero knowledge in the solar system. If I just start studying from what the event is on, will I miss some basics that I should know or not make sense?

syo_astro wrote:

AwersomeUser wrote:Hello!
Does the solar system wiki https://scioly.org/wiki/index.php/Solar_System contains all the study information I need for the event? Also, is this https://scioly.org/wiki/images/6/6e/Reg ... b_test.pdf like the style and difficulty for the real event?

Thanks in advance.

P.S This is my first post ever in this forum

Hey! Welcome to the forums, thank you for posting, hopefully I show this place welcomes those question things:D.

For your questions:
-Short answer is no. Long answer is the wiki never contains *all* the information you need and isn't even guaranteed to be correct. It's meant to be a good starting place and gives ideas about how to organize your notes. This forum is student/volunteer-run and not an official resource hosted by soinc.org or anything (soinc.org is the official Science Olympiad website).
-As for that test, every test writer is a little different and can choose to adjust test format and difficulty. That said, AlphaTauri (admin/user/cool person on this website) does know how to write solid tests (though, often tougher than average regionals tests). If you're looking for something more "standard" or "official", you can look on the soinc.org page for Solar System or any event in general. Keep in mind even those can be different from actual competition, but being on the official national website probably helps advertise it to potential writers. The thing with local test writers is that they're all volunteers and situations range from asking someone last minute to actual experts in the field.

I can explain these points more if you don't know what any of that means, and I hope that helps.

Adding on to syo_astro, that test is over last year's topics. This year is very different, and that test won't really help you out (except possibly for the moon).

AwersomeUser wrote:Also, I have not started studying for the event yet. I have almost zero knowledge in the solar system. If I just start studying from what the event is on, will I miss some basics that I should know or not make sense?

You could probably just read a few webpages about the solar system to know some basic astronomy concepts that apply within our solar system (and out of it). For example, slingshotting, Kepler's Laws, etc. The rules manual and what's on it should be your priority for this event, though. Don't focus too much of your time on general solar system stuff.