Scioly.org

I love the breadth of subjects covered in scioly.

However for the life of me there are a few events I just do not understand why they are being used.

First off, road scholar. This seems like its roughly 25 years behind the times. Any this is coming from someone who did a ton of mountaineering and deep country backpacking.

Second. Reach for the stars. Really? We have all the phenomena of the cosmos and we want kids to waste time learning the random patterns stars make that has no real value?

Why?!?! Why are these here? I’m sure there are some in division c which are just as baffling.

ping pong parachute, end of story

cool hand luke wrote:I love the breadth of subjects covered in scioly.

However for the life of me there are a few events I just do not understand why they are being used.

First off, road scholar. This seems like its roughly 25 years behind the times. Any this is coming from someone who did a ton of mountaineering and deep country backpacking.

Second. Reach for the stars. Really? We have all the phenomena of the cosmos and we want kids to waste time learning the random patterns stars make that has no real value?

Why?!?! Why are these here? I’m sure there are some in division c which are just as baffling.

RFTS covers more then some patterns. I think it had stellar evolution and some Astro math in it.
The real question is game on and ping pong parachute

I do have a hatred for indoor bottle rockets which I think is the same as ping pong parachute. They had to cancel it at Texas state this year due to mechanical failure if the launcher

I saw the evolution of stars but it seemed like a small portion of the tests I saw

cool hand luke wrote:I saw the evolution of stars but it seemed like a small portion of the tests I saw

It could really do with a little more focus on stellar evolution and such, although it's been 6 years since I've even looked at the event so I'm not familiar with whether it's changed since I did it.

cool hand luke wrote:I love the breadth of subjects covered in scioly.

However for the life of me there are a few events I just do not understand why they are being used.

First off, road scholar. This seems like its roughly 25 years behind the times. Any this is coming from someone who did a ton of mountaineering and deep country backpacking.

Second. Reach for the stars. Really? We have all the phenomena of the cosmos and we want kids to waste time learning the random patterns stars make that has no real value?

Why?!?! Why are these here? I’m sure there are some in division c which are just as baffling.

In response to RFTS, it is definitely going in the direction of being Astro-lite, rather than just "constellation identification". For one, it definitely has more math on average than it used to, and adding DSOs to the identification list increases the focus on "types of objects" just by nature. I am also very biased because RFTS has been my favorite B Division event since middle school.

Arguably, it should always have been more conceptual than identification, but some supervisors tend to gravitate towards straight identification because it's easier to write for.

As for Road Scholar, I think the concept of map interpretation is important, and some form of map/image interpretation event should be included. I think they probably could do with fully replacing the highway map portion with the satellite portion.

EDIT: Amusingly, the two events you bring up are actually my two favorite B Division events. Different tastes, I suppose.

I love Road Scholar

Crimesolver wrote:ping pong parachute, end of story

Well at least it doesn't take much time to make a device for it...

Fermi Questions is definitely worse, since you have to waste your time memorizing a ton of random numbers that have no practical application

SciolyMaster wrote:

Crimesolver wrote:ping pong parachute, end of story

Well at least it doesn't take much time to make a device for it...

Fermi Questions is definitely worse, since you have to waste your time memorizing a ton of random numbers that have no practical application

What are you talking about, thanks to Fermi at MIT I know how many calories are in a cubic light year of butter! I'm going to use that knowledge everyday of my life!