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We are excited to announce that Camas Science Olympiad Invitational will be held on December 12th, 2020, for B and C divisions.

We will be operating under the MiniSO model, running on scilympiad platform, and closely following national event schedule. To alleviate the challenges from COVID-19 pandemic, we enlisted Camas alumni and passionate volunteers from WA and around the country to help writing tests and proctoring. So participating team and coaches do not need to write any tests. Grading will occur throughout the week; results will be announced on December 19th.

To address constraints associated with competing from your homes, we will not run Gravity Vehicles (C) and Mousetrap vehicles (B) but will host all other MiniSO events, including Digital structure as a trial event. Other trial events are Environmental Chemistry (B, C), Solar Power (B), and Code Analysis (C). More information including registration and updates can be found on at https://scilympiad.com/wa-camas/. Registration will be open till November 21st, 2020.

There is a registration fee of $25 per team. We are willing to help teams that need financial aid or provide any other help as needed to make it an enjoyable experiences for you to participate in the Science Olympiad community. If you have any questions or suggestions, please feel free to contact our director @ matthew.chase@camas.wednet.edu, or PM me.

Team list, team number, event schedule and rule modifications updated on
https://scilympiad.com/wa-camas/
Self scheduled signup is open.

Event Supervisor Review: Detector Building

Congrats to everyone who competed in the Detector Building event! I was very pleased with the distribution of scores and especially many of the responses to the short answer questions which demonstrated exceptional understanding of the event topics.

Test Format: When writing for Detector Building, I tend to focus on what I think makes it a unique event from Circuit Lab: engineering hardware devices to gather data for developing models. I test for familiarity with components used for constructing devices, understanding of the science that allows for light-emission or temperature-sensing with these components, and knowing how to work with data effectively. As the mini SO version of this event excludes the build portion, it was even more important to emulate these parts of the event through the Written Test. As such, questions on this test emphasized operational knowledge of device components: evaluating choices in device design (question 10, 13, 15), comprehending datasheets (questions 16-20), proposing device designs (question 17, 26), writing code to complete a specific task (question 21), and working practically with data (question 23, 27-32)—doesn’t this kind of look like the process for making your device?

Impressions: I was very pleased with the responses to the component application question (17); while some teams misunderstood the purpose of the sensor, all teams showed good design thinking when explaining their proposed applications. I was also very pleased with responses to the coding question (21). This was perhaps one of the most involved questions on the test and as such was worth the most points. Through this question, teams were able to demonstrate their proficiency in coding, an essential step to making a temperature-sensing device. At every tournament, a number of teams continue to struggle with calculation questions, possibly because they might be unfamiliar with the equations involved. If you struggle with these questions, it is worth familiarizing yourself with them as they frequently make up many points on tests.

I’ve uploaded the test, datasheet referenced by the test, answer key with detailed explanations, and results summary with histograms for overall score as well as by question to the Test Exchange. I hope you’ll find the detailed explanations I’ve written for every question and answer choice helpful for your preparations. If you competed in the event or take this test in the future, I’d love to hear your feedback on it.

Thanks to all who competed at Camas Invite - and congratulations to Jeffrey Trail MS and Tesla STEM HS for winning B and C tournaments respectively! The results should be final: https://scilympiad.com/wa-camas/Info/TourResults 

We also released our test and keys publicly so other teams who did not get a chance to attend can use it for practice. If you find questions/keys wrong please DM me. The link to test folder is posted on the web site https://scilympiad.com/wa-camas

This also contains score distribution for all events and max scores per event. There are 6 events that were affected by system-wide answer saving issues - with likely Code Buster and C-Disease affected most based on score analysis. These are marked in the score distribution.

Thanks to all the event supervisors and volunteers!

Lei