User:TheStinkyRat
Andy is a little rat from Bay Academy. He loves Crave the Wave and Optics. Sadly CtW is gone.. and he's is quite afraid of Ecology and Green Generation.
7th Grade (2022-2023)
Andy was in Block 5. The events that Block 5 consisted of was Crave the Wave, Green Generation, Sounds of Music, and Storm the Castle.
He has made some great friends along the way like Tx358 and has gotten closer to Likearecord
Events
Crave the Wave -
This was my favorite event. It was always exciting doing the questions and making new friends through it. I got my first 1st medal from this event, which I am a bit proud of. Learning about light was the most fun part. Examples include Snells law, critical angle, Brewsters angle, colors, and anything else relating to light. All except for the Double Slit Experiment. I hated learning about it as it there were too many variables in the equations that my pea brain couldn't comprehend properly. Overall, this event was very interesting with the stations and just the questions in general. Physics is just very very cool. This event was amazing so it's a 9.5/10.
Green Generation -
At first, I absolutely despised this event as it was just some random life science event with physics. My block mates hated it too. We had this event in the block because of conflicts. However, we slowly, but not fully grew fond of this and it became just another event we had fun with. Learning the ecology of things was the favorite but the sustainability and human impacts were very painful. This event was not too shabby, but for me, it's a 7/10.
Sounds of Music -
The very first time learning about this event was very confusing. This is embarrassing, as I didn't know what MUSIC THEORY was. I legitimately thought it was some weirdos theorizing about music. Turns out it was just about the structure of music like notes, terms in music, etc. Because of this, I didn't like it that much but quickly grew fond of it (way faster than GG) after the first in-person invitational. Playing the music on our fellow instrument named 'Camy' was very fun. In addition, the physics part of this event was very fun to do, like the Doppler effect and string tension questions. Overall, I rate this event a 8/10.
Storm the Castle -
This pure build event was very fun to practice with. Although half the time I never did storm as I was B team, the times I did and the times I practiced with this was very enjoyable. 'Terry' was the name of the trebuchet and Terry did a great job this year. I feel like I needed more practice with my friend to do well. I don't really have much to say about this event as I barely did it. The event was a good 8/10.
| Events | Bayard Rustin (Sat.) | LISO | Springhouse | Cornell | BirdSo (Sat.) | Regionals | Average Placement |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Crave the Wave | 35th | 8th | 1st | 3rd | 41st | 3rd | 15th |
| Green Generation | 44th | 15th | 2nd | 3rd | 86th | 10th | 27th |
| Sounds of Music | 44th | 9th | 2nd | 6th | 69th | 5th | 23rd |
| Storm the Castle | N/A | N/A | 3rd | 4th | N/A | N/A | 4th |
Invitationals -
Bayard Rustin Satellite -
This was my first ever competition, and I didn't really know what to expect. My partner was Zainab F. Scilympiad was a bit confusing to use but we got through it. The scores were not too great but we should've just studied more. I don't remember too much about this invitational so yeah...
LISO -
My first ever in-person invitational with my partner, Dennis A. During Crave the Wave, I remember being very confused on some of the questions but some I knew at least. In the end, it was very funny because we were 0.1 points away from medaling (top 7). In Sounds of Music, I thought the test was pretty simple but what pained me was doing the sound test. I said the wrong tonic... and therefore we were 1200Hz off from the notes 🥹. We placed 9th and I feel like we could've medaled if it wasn't for me. Green Generation was a guessing game. Dennis and I had a very sad cheat sheet with a couple of open spaces. It was not entirely a guessing game as we knew a good amount of questions. Hey, at least we did better than our A team during this event, which we were proud of.
Springhouse -
For this invitational, I was partnered with Daniel M. I think we worked really well together. For crave, I knew lots of questions on the light/optics section (my favorite part). I vividly remember the stations, they were very fun but one was very confusing. One we had to hit a wood block with a tuning fork and answer questions about harmonics. Both Daniel and I were very confused on this so I decided to simply complete the test portion while he tried figuring it out. We ended up getting first which was surprising as there were a good amount of questions we didn't know, like double slit experiment. For sounds, there were tons of questions on types of instruments and musical instrument anatomy. Luckily, just a couple days ago we added those in our binder so we aced them. Daniel was the instrument master so he did the music theory and the sound tests while I just did the physics section of the test. I don't really remember that much about Green Generation but our cheat sheet was way better than last times.
Cornell -
Cornell was one of the best invitationals. It was fun getting to see the architecture of the campus, getting to look at the view, getting lost, and meeting other teams. The crave the wave test was quite easy, there was just a small section we didn't quite get. For sounds of music, the first couple questions were EXTREMELY confusing. We could not solve it at all, and after the test, we talked to the other students and they didn't know either. There was a formula to it but we still didn't know how to plug it in. In the end, we just guessed. For green generation, I remember the funny bonus credit, drawing our favorite bird. My partner, Daniel, drew a common loon. It was very derpy and looked pretty stupid LOL. At least we still got the extra credit!! However, after we got back the test, we realized how illiterate we were. I used the wrong word for a short response and ended up getting the entire question wrong (I'm really embarrassed about it) and Daniel didn't see the 'show work' next to the math portion so we lost lots of credit. To make matters worse, we lost our tiebreaker so 3rd was the final result. Lastly, storm the castle. I felt really useless at this event as Daniel really just did everything, like setting our trebuchet up and launching it. All I remember doing was passing him materials and suggesting how we can move it. Standing there while Daniel did the things was really awkward..
BirdSo Satellite -
I was partnered up with Zainab for this test. For sounds of music, we were STRUGGLING. We had to hear notes and identify the chords and the thing is, none of us knew it so we ended up skipping it. We did not know life half the test. The most embarrassing thing was me getting recorded trying to play the instrument. We weren't planning on me playing our instrument but last second it changed. While Daniel and Dennis were doing the recording, I was frantically trying to remember the music notes. When I was being recorded, I stuttered and was very awkward. Playing was even worse, I had no rhythm or anything. I remembered almost all of the song except for the last part. My brain blanked. Crave the wave was better, but our we were very confused on the radio stuff. We did not study that enough.. And lastly green generation. We were very bad at managing our time and ran out. The questions were okay though. I don't really have nothing to say.
Regionals -
Regionals was fun, and we got to meet new alumnis there too. Crave the wave was fun, Zainab and I did better than A team because we knew more about spectroscopy than them. Right before the test, we realized we forgot our binders so we ran back up so fast. For sounds of music, the test was easy as we had everything in our binders. However, the music test, I was very nervous and literally blanked my rhythm away. I knew the notes but forgot how fast I should've played it... It was sad. I don't remember much about green generation so I will say nothing about it except that we didn't medal and we did horribly.
As you can see, Andy didn't do very well this year (he didn't even go to states!!). However, he will try his best now that he has gotten a feel on what Scioly is like. New refound motivation from friends and teachers will help him do well on 4 entirely new events (hopefully).
8th Grade (2023-2024)
Now going to 8th grade (2023-2024), I will be doing Air Trajectory, Ecology, Optics, and Wind Power