Re: Illinois 2011
Posted: February 11th, 2011, 8:15 pm
Friday:
This is kind of late (musical rehearsal until 10. . .ugh!), but good luck to everyone competing at Loyola tomorrow!
Saturday:
So, my day at Loyola! CLS came in 7th overall, so we didn't stink. I also saw my best friend from third grade that I haven't seen for 8 years, which was crazy and awesome!
Ornithology: 1/6 of the stinking test was bird calls! There were a couple IDs I wasn't sure on, but other than that, I felt pretty good. If it wasn't for the bird calls, I would have medaled, I bet. And they were tough ones, too.
Experimental Design: One of our strongest people for this event was sick, so I filled in. The experiment had to do with experimenting with different properties of bird eggs. Obviously, they didn't give us real eggs, only a golf ball, ping pong ball, and Easter egg. We did something with distance rolled of a ramp, and got 5th, surprisingly.
Mission Possible: Could have gone better, could have gone a lot worse, so I'm thankful. 5th place again. The event director had a different interpretation of the rules than we did, so we made a decision that cost us a 100 points. We would have done better if he had told us off the bat. But he was pretty nice, and gave us advice on how to improve our device. Not all judges take time to do that.
Forensics: My event partner (a senior) hadn't done too well on his other events, so he said I would get a medal or else. 5th place again! I think the guy handing out medals got sick of me. . .but anyway, I handled the chemical part on my own since we had been doing practicing with the chem teacher at school, and I think I did pretty well. I was fairly confident on most, anyway. Whoever this event director is, they like theming their test. This one had all characters from the Simpsons, last time was Finding Nemo.
Fossils: This was a pretty easy test. Me and my partner did pretty well on it, but since it was easy, I think a lot of it came down to tiebreakers. Lots of "three ways these jaws are different" and "3 reasons this is not a Trilobite" and "3 reasons these ribs differ, other than mode of preservation" and "3 possible reasons why Trilobites gained spines in the Devonian" type questions. We got 6, one place off of a medal!!! I was so mad!
So, I kind of rambled here. I'm sure many of you could care less about how these tests went. If anyone wants, I could probably PM some of the test questions to you to practice.
This is kind of late (musical rehearsal until 10. . .ugh!), but good luck to everyone competing at Loyola tomorrow!
Saturday:
So, my day at Loyola! CLS came in 7th overall, so we didn't stink. I also saw my best friend from third grade that I haven't seen for 8 years, which was crazy and awesome!
Ornithology: 1/6 of the stinking test was bird calls! There were a couple IDs I wasn't sure on, but other than that, I felt pretty good. If it wasn't for the bird calls, I would have medaled, I bet. And they were tough ones, too.
Experimental Design: One of our strongest people for this event was sick, so I filled in. The experiment had to do with experimenting with different properties of bird eggs. Obviously, they didn't give us real eggs, only a golf ball, ping pong ball, and Easter egg. We did something with distance rolled of a ramp, and got 5th, surprisingly.
Mission Possible: Could have gone better, could have gone a lot worse, so I'm thankful. 5th place again. The event director had a different interpretation of the rules than we did, so we made a decision that cost us a 100 points. We would have done better if he had told us off the bat. But he was pretty nice, and gave us advice on how to improve our device. Not all judges take time to do that.
Forensics: My event partner (a senior) hadn't done too well on his other events, so he said I would get a medal or else. 5th place again! I think the guy handing out medals got sick of me. . .but anyway, I handled the chemical part on my own since we had been doing practicing with the chem teacher at school, and I think I did pretty well. I was fairly confident on most, anyway. Whoever this event director is, they like theming their test. This one had all characters from the Simpsons, last time was Finding Nemo.
Fossils: This was a pretty easy test. Me and my partner did pretty well on it, but since it was easy, I think a lot of it came down to tiebreakers. Lots of "three ways these jaws are different" and "3 reasons this is not a Trilobite" and "3 reasons these ribs differ, other than mode of preservation" and "3 possible reasons why Trilobites gained spines in the Devonian" type questions. We got 6, one place off of a medal!!! I was so mad!
So, I kind of rambled here. I'm sure many of you could care less about how these tests went. If anyone wants, I could probably PM some of the test questions to you to practice.
