Pennsylvania 2019

[Unome]

Big rip for me in states...
It is my first year of Science Olympiad as a 6th grader, but I don't know if I could have done better...?
Though my performance was not so good, I did like how states worked and I enjoyed the whole event. Here is a list of my events and my results,

• ELG: 5th place
  Game On: 6th place
  Road Scholar: 6th place
  Heredity....: 17th place....

So... you look at my Heredity placement and you think, "eeeh... that's not good," and I completely understand why. You see, I'm not going to say bad things about my partner because he is my friend, but I always carry him in the Invitationals and the Regional and State competition. He is completely clueless, and he doesn't come to many classes. For any of you who took the Heredity test, you would know about Station 4. Station 4 was not very difficult, but my partner literally sat there the whole time as I did the station. We are both in 6th grade, so we should be equal, but I guess not. This happened with all of the other tests, and he only answers a few questions, some of them are not even correct, so I have to erase them and replace it. I am not making my partner an excuse for 17th place, for I myself could have prepared harder, (but choose not to) but it really made me mad and I wanted to medal in all 4 of my events, but I am still happy with 3

I think I have talked about Heredity enough. Now it is time for Road Scholar, which went ok for me. So, no bad partner this time, and he is 9th grader, even better than me. I take the theory Qs, topo and road maps as my part, and he does profiling and the student drawn map (SDM). My partner is extremely good at profiling and SDM which gets us placements in our competitions. Me, however, requires a bit of assistance here and then from him, but I handle most of the questions by myself. He finishes profiling and SDM in roughly 15-20 mins, and then he helps me. I really like my partner, and I am sad that he is leaving the team due to him being a 9th grader this year. He was happy about placing in the event in 6th place, and I am happy too. I am not complaining about Road Scholar, but I wonder who will be insane enough to do it with me next year...

In Game On, I wasn't exactly satisfied with our 6th place, but at least we medaled. So, my partner is a 7th grader, and we are close friends, but he decided that he wanted to try something new, and that... did not turn out right? I guess. Anyway, we ran out of time, but we did finish the game. So after the event, we were so anxious about our performance, but we did place and medaled as 6th place. We definitely could have done better, considering our score difference from my regional score (which I am too much of a chicken to reveal).

Elastic Launched Glider was pretty good, but not the best. With our A model, we were getting 18-19 seconds in our gym, which had a lower ceiling. Unfortunately, our model only got 16 secs each as our three bets flights, and we got the 20% bonus. We didn't know what happened to our model, or if it somehow got damaged inside our boxes, but we could have gotten away with 4th or 3rd. I am happy with 5th place though.

Those are all my events and what happened for me in them. For my first year, I think I did OK. I will definitely try harder and study more next season, for mine is over.

Pretty good results as a 6th grader I'd say, though I can understand if you weren't satisfied.

Next season is already here though

[jsegal]

What were the top wright stuff times. And how tall was the ceiling

[klastyioer]

What were the top wright stuff times. And how tall was the ceiling

i already said ceiling height in this channel its like 3-4 pages back i think
uhhh times i was told to keep secret from all the placings so i shall not reveal
but the range was around 1;50-over 3 from top 6 and up
below 6 was a couple of 1;30-1;49's
and below that was like ;30-;1

[klastyioer]

i wanted to take a moment again here to congratulate everyone in this years state competition. it was a long fight and a good year for all of you. i know most of you personally on this forum and was able to say hi to most of you yesterday which was super nice (ps glad to meet any of you that i havent met b4). you all worked extremely hard and i am proud of each and everyone of you even if you didnt place or didnt do as well as you thought you were going to.

i also wanna take a moment to say congrats to all of the lmsd schools

first, lower merion for doing an outstanding job yesterday. it was a tough battle against lm and you all fought really hard. good job to everyone at lm and i hope to see you all next year! best of luck to my lm folks!

second, welsh valley and bc. you all also did an amazing job yesterday and i was glad to see some events placing that didnt think they were going to place. shoutout to bc for winning solar, potions, and disease and wv for pulling through with widi, all the builds, dp, and last but not least, mystery (its a very hard event and im so proud of their work)

all in all, it was quite the competition and i just wanted to say good job to everyone! see you next year!

[klastyioer]

ik waffletree already posted this but here it is again cause ppl r asking
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... edit#gid=0 a formulated doc it was live from yesterday
chem lab we got diff results on so those rankings may not be accurate
im trying to check over the other ones rn

[SonicSpeed]

If you read my post, I talked about my Heredity partner, and I just wanted to apologize (even tho he doesn't know this exists) for being mad at him. Sry.

[Anomaly]

eh I guess since other ppl are starting it I might as well do event reviews

Anatomy and Physiology (10th): Am I salty we missed medalling by two points? Yes. But danggggg that test was HARD. Like my partner and I thought that the regionals test was hard, and then we came to the states test and starting cursing our butts off after like the first two stations. If you studied in depth and not superficially like my partner and I did sorta, then you probably did well. I do wish however they had given us more time for the heart rate and blood pressure of doing the person, I felt like if they gave more time for that then it would be okay. I was struggling trying to get the stethoscope in my ears because of my headscarf lol and i wasted like 30 seconds trying that and then time ran out and we couldn't do blood pressure . Overall, I would give this 7/10, mainly because of its difficulty and the fact they actually made us take blood pressure and heart rate of an actual person.

Codebusters (5th): Wow. Just, wow. I have to really commend my partners here, they've worked their butts off since regionals to get better at code. In fact, we did better here than we did at regionals (6th at regionals -> 5th at states). It also wasn't until states that we first tried doing the timed question together. We were the 2nd or 3rd to finish in our timeslot I think, with a time of 5:43. Our biggest weakness at regionals was that we were extremely weak on aristocrats, and my partners worked on that since regionals to solve every aristocrat at states except for two (or one?) of them. However, none of us attempted any of the patristocrats, I tried the xenocrypts but I was unable to solve them, and I was unable to solve any of the Baconians or the RSAs (except for the which numbers do you need and what's the formula for rsa lmao). I also forgot how to do hill in the middle of while I was doing it, and running key i think i messed it up. Aside from those, we pretty much did all of the questions, and that's what led to our 5th place. I'm really proud of my partners for studying their butts off for this since regionals. (funnily enough, my one partner and i took a practice test the night before and our score wasn't even half of what it was at states lol). Interesting how they gave us 58 minutes to do the test though. Overall, well run event, rating 9/10.

Disease Detectives (4th): Heh, despite this being the event I put the least effort into, it was my best event, mainly because I had a really good partner and I've done Disease before. The test was a decent length, my partner and I probably finished it within like the first 30 minutes and then checked each other's work for the rest of the time. Kind of wish the test was a little harder though... there were only 8 points separating the top 6, and we lost to third on a tiebreaker rip (@scienceturtle314, not salty at all ). Decently run event, 7/10.

Write It Do It (14th): I didn't do too hot in this event, mainly because between regionals and states my partner dropped, and my new partner and I practiced only once before states. I did have an amazing time waiting with the rest of the doers for the writers to finish. Everyone in the room was having a discussion about Science Olympiad and other things, and it was just really nice to be able to talk with other people and have a good time waiting. Model was good, had enough variation that it would separate teams decently, and it wasn't too short. People that finished the model probably finished within the last 5 minutes or so, but I personally didn't finish the model and I got lost halfway through my partner's instructions and the last minute i was putting random things on my model. Overall, well run event, 10/10.

[SciOlyVeteran]

Incredible competition in Division C yesterday. Congrats to Harriton and Rustin on making it to the National Tournament. Also, a shoutout to Lower Merion on what they have been able to accomplish this year, no matter their close 3rd place finish yesterday. Some interesting and pleasant surprises in the Top 10 from yesterday (in bold):

Harriton
Bayard Rustin
Lower Merion
Cumberland Valley
Shady Side Academy
Penncrest
Conestoga
Garnet Valley
State College
Parkland

Competing in one of the most difficult states, Garnet Valley continues to try and break the longstanding success of Harriton, Bayard Rustin, Lower Merion, Penncrest, and Conestoga in SEPA, and have taken a significant step toward doing so by entering the Top 10 at states in their best finish to date.

[biz11]

Astro: Great test as always. One math question wasn't great, there was really just the first part that was difficult and obscure, but the actual astro math was pretty easy. Some of the conceptual DSO questions seemed very obscure, but that was probably just poor notes on my parts. Overall, loved the test, it was very hard with many levels of questions to really differentiate teams, 10/10.

Circuit Lab: Warning, long rant incoming, sorry.
I have a (well many) serious issue with this test. By my count, it broke the rules in AT LEAST THREE ways (this is excluding not having a labeled tiebreaker, unless I missed it, which is also required). I'd argue it did in five ways and missed the spirit of the rules multiple other places. For those who didn't take the test, what I mean by that is at completely skipped REQUIRED topics on the test, and even when it technically covered material, it was extremely minimal, ie. having one ac question and it being about hazards, one question about all of emag and having it be transformers which is just 1 formula, etc. Even the few times it chose to focus on stuff, it was poorly done. The history section consisted of all but one question being "In what year did ___". These were all easy, but every team would know them after looking through notes, and it prevented any advantage teams could have for actually knowing history because that's nothing you can guess or you should be expected to study. The other section they focused on was Operational Amplifiers, which on face is fine, but it was a very repetitive section. Admittedly, I don't consider myself to be good at them, but there was one question that I didn't understand at all (the 4 point question, if anyone took the test and knows the solution I'd be very interested to hear). Now, since they didn't do any of this, the question is what did they do. Well, the majority of the test (and the majority of the points) focused on the application of resistors in series/parallel. In my opinion, there are two big issues with this. 1st, it doesn't benefit studying at all, all that matters is avoiding making a dumb mistake since everyone will know the formulas. 2nd, this isn't the spirit of scioly, it can only be accomplished through EXTENSIVE practicing and no actual learning new material. The result is that those who took an engineering class in school will always be able to beat other kids. This is especially an issue when they're skipping many sections that actually do require learning. Furthermore, it's not like the test required much real knowledge either way. Almost everyone in my room finished it very early (we finished with 15 minutes left). I have never before had a scioly test where someone could do well without having done any studying and having just copy pasted Wikipedia pages for notes, but I strongly believe you could on this test because it was so short. Finally, the lab section of the test. This consisted of two parts. The first one being a section where you were given 5 resistors and told to make a certain resistance through wiring. Admittedly, this is very doable and it was really just me being dumb and slow at reading the resistor colors that messed me up. However, I still think it is a very poor question. Anyone who knows the formulas for resistors in series and parallel can do this question. But, the only way to do it is by guessing and checking different combinations and hoping you get it fast enough. There is nothing else you can do, and only some amount of elimination, meaning it is largely just a question of lucky guessing. The second lab question had you make a complicated schematic. Now, we must have messed up somewhere, which is our fault, but I also don't think this question should be asked. It is trivial to follow a schematic, and especially when it is using parts not mentioned in the rules, it isn't something that you can in any way prepare for. I'd also argue that in true circuit analysis you should be able to test your circuit, whereas they tested it at the end and you were either right or wrong, but that is whatever. It is also true that they then asked you to determine what LED would light up, but again, with a circuit that uses parts not mentioned in the rules, this requires little studying and honestly was still pretty simple. But the biggest issue with the labs, in my opinion, is that it was an all or nothing question. Having a question be worth a third of the points that you can get wrong by having one connection be incomplete, or a broken part that would be impossible to diagnose, is a serious issue in my mind.
Overall, this was the worst experience I've had in scioly, and I don't think it anyway was representative of my, or anyone else's, time and effort in the event. 0/10 -- If anyone disagrees with me on this I'd love to hear another opinion.

MTV: From my understanding, the measured distance of the track was wrong by a rather significant distance (around 0.4 meters). I would like someone else to confirm this as I don't trust my vehicle's traveling distance enough to be sure on this (although I did hear other people say similar issues or I wouldn't be saying anything). If indeed the measurement was wrong I have to give this a 1/10 as that's completely unfair for competitors. If it was actually an accurate distance and the track was messing up people's distances or I just heard of a couple isolated cases, I'm really sorry as the event supervisors were incredibly kind, and I'd give it a 10/10.

[Froggie]

Event review time!!

Disease Detectives (5): Great test overall. The questions weren't too hard or too easy. It was a little on the short side but still very good. 9/10

Thermodynamics (4): We had an hour to do 21 multiple choice questions. Would have been nice to see more questions or harder questions because my partner finished half of it while I was doing the box portion. Also, I would have liked to see the starting temperature for the box similar for all the teams. Some teams started at around 66 degrees while others started around 60 degrees. 6/10

Potions and Poisons (2): Minor complaint is that they used wild carrot instead of western water hemlock, but fortunately we had both our cheat sheet. The test was a little short and pretty easy, but the lab was interesting because the test used chemicals I've never used in competition before. 7/10

Herpetology (1): Fun test 10/10