Friday, April 22, 2005
Experiment
I am going to experiment with something new: I am going to pray. This may seem somewhat awkward because I do not hold belief in any gods or supernatural forces. However, I do feel that if I were to share my troubles with an imaginary friend, I would feel much less stress. Basically, I am trying to use one of the benefits of religion without being religious.
Monday, April 04, 2005
Science Olympiad
On Saturday April 2, the 2005 Wisconsin State Science Olympiad was held at UW-Stout near Menominee, WI, which is about a four hour drive from Neenah. I participated in five events and built the tower for the tower building event. My schedule went as follows:
9:00-10:00........Astronomy
10:05-11:05.......Forestry
11:10-12:10........Chemistry Lab
12:15-1:15..........Physics Lab
1:20-2:20...........Chemical ID
Astronomy consisted of a test of Astronomical knowledge that could be taken with the aid of any materials, including a laptop. My partner and I, however, did not bring any materials, giving us the sense that we were not going to do very well. We finished the test to the best of our ability and left.
Forestry consisted of identifying samples of various trees from a multiple choice list (including none of the above) using an tree guide that was given to all teams a few months ago. My partner and I did a fairly good job finding the species and its habitat and economic uses and we were the only ones who had the slightest idea of how to do the tiebreaker round of our group (Given the number of teams, events are separated into groups; there is a Forestry event during each of the time slots available to different teams. This is true of the other events as well). We thought we had done a fairly good job and had a medal-worthy performance.
After Forestry, I learned that the tower had not supported all 15 kg of weight. However, I had thought that the scoring was solely based upon efficiency, so I thought it would medal anyway.
My third event, Chemistry Lab, went quite nicely. The lab and test centered around oxidation-reduction reactions. To conserve time, I worked on balancing an oxidation-reduction reaction, given as part 1, while she put together a galvonic cell, given as part 2. We worked together on the questions of part 2 and part 3, which had to do with electron orbitals and Lewis structures. After completing the event, we were quite confident in our performance.
I had the same partner for Physics Lab as I did for Astronomy. This event centered around optics, and more specifically, prisms and different wavelegnths of light. It consisted almost completely of mathematical calculations, some of which we found to be difficult because we were rusty on some formulas. We came out thinking that we did a bit worse on it than we did on the Astronomy test.
The final event was a disaster. Last year, my partner and I had gotten second place, which had been my only medal, in Quantitative Analysis, which was now Chemical ID. Hoping for a repeat performance, I was put into this event again, with a different partner, as my partner from last year had graduated. However, the mistake we made was not to plan for the event. I memorized the solubility rules to refresh my knowledge of which ionic compounds would react and which ones wouldn't. However, last year we made did reactions and made a flow chart to memorize before the event. Such planning did not take place this time. Another setback was the fact that we had to use five pipets for ten chemicals, which meant that we needed to clean them after using them each time instead of an excess of disposable pipets that quickened the process. The entire situation left me in the dark with not enough time to turn on the light. So, I finished the second part of the lab and guessed what every single compound was, probably not getting a single one right.
We left UW-Stout immediately as to get home at a reasonable hour, meaning that we missed the awards. We ate at Pizza Hut and arrived home at 8:00 pm. Just today, I found out the results:
We won second place in Chemistry Lab, barely losing in a tiebreaker
We won third place in Forestry
We won third place in both Astronomy and Physics Lab, much to my partner's and my suprise.
Not surprisingly, we tied for tenth in the Chemical ID event out of eleven possible places
We won third place in Geocaching, forth place in Practical Data Gathering, and fifth place in Robot Ramble, in none of which did I participate.
The Tower was tied for ninth place with all the others that failed to carry the full load.
The team was ninth out of thirty-eight overall.
The results were pleasantly suprising to me.
I has also recieved my last two college letters while I was gone. From Williams I recieved an expected rejection. However, from University of Chicago, I recieved a letter very similar to Grinnell's, which told me that I was on an unranked waiting list. This means that I will enroll at Lawrence but work to earn admittance to both University of Chicago and Grinnell. Of the schools, I most favor Univeristy of Chicago.
9:00-10:00........Astronomy
10:05-11:05.......Forestry
11:10-12:10........Chemistry Lab
12:15-1:15..........Physics Lab
1:20-2:20...........Chemical ID
Astronomy consisted of a test of Astronomical knowledge that could be taken with the aid of any materials, including a laptop. My partner and I, however, did not bring any materials, giving us the sense that we were not going to do very well. We finished the test to the best of our ability and left.
Forestry consisted of identifying samples of various trees from a multiple choice list (including none of the above) using an tree guide that was given to all teams a few months ago. My partner and I did a fairly good job finding the species and its habitat and economic uses and we were the only ones who had the slightest idea of how to do the tiebreaker round of our group (Given the number of teams, events are separated into groups; there is a Forestry event during each of the time slots available to different teams. This is true of the other events as well). We thought we had done a fairly good job and had a medal-worthy performance.
After Forestry, I learned that the tower had not supported all 15 kg of weight. However, I had thought that the scoring was solely based upon efficiency, so I thought it would medal anyway.
My third event, Chemistry Lab, went quite nicely. The lab and test centered around oxidation-reduction reactions. To conserve time, I worked on balancing an oxidation-reduction reaction, given as part 1, while she put together a galvonic cell, given as part 2. We worked together on the questions of part 2 and part 3, which had to do with electron orbitals and Lewis structures. After completing the event, we were quite confident in our performance.
I had the same partner for Physics Lab as I did for Astronomy. This event centered around optics, and more specifically, prisms and different wavelegnths of light. It consisted almost completely of mathematical calculations, some of which we found to be difficult because we were rusty on some formulas. We came out thinking that we did a bit worse on it than we did on the Astronomy test.
The final event was a disaster. Last year, my partner and I had gotten second place, which had been my only medal, in Quantitative Analysis, which was now Chemical ID. Hoping for a repeat performance, I was put into this event again, with a different partner, as my partner from last year had graduated. However, the mistake we made was not to plan for the event. I memorized the solubility rules to refresh my knowledge of which ionic compounds would react and which ones wouldn't. However, last year we made did reactions and made a flow chart to memorize before the event. Such planning did not take place this time. Another setback was the fact that we had to use five pipets for ten chemicals, which meant that we needed to clean them after using them each time instead of an excess of disposable pipets that quickened the process. The entire situation left me in the dark with not enough time to turn on the light. So, I finished the second part of the lab and guessed what every single compound was, probably not getting a single one right.
We left UW-Stout immediately as to get home at a reasonable hour, meaning that we missed the awards. We ate at Pizza Hut and arrived home at 8:00 pm. Just today, I found out the results:
We won second place in Chemistry Lab, barely losing in a tiebreaker
We won third place in Forestry
We won third place in both Astronomy and Physics Lab, much to my partner's and my suprise.
Not surprisingly, we tied for tenth in the Chemical ID event out of eleven possible places
We won third place in Geocaching, forth place in Practical Data Gathering, and fifth place in Robot Ramble, in none of which did I participate.
The Tower was tied for ninth place with all the others that failed to carry the full load.
The team was ninth out of thirty-eight overall.
The results were pleasantly suprising to me.
I has also recieved my last two college letters while I was gone. From Williams I recieved an expected rejection. However, from University of Chicago, I recieved a letter very similar to Grinnell's, which told me that I was on an unranked waiting list. This means that I will enroll at Lawrence but work to earn admittance to both University of Chicago and Grinnell. Of the schools, I most favor Univeristy of Chicago.
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