Science Olympiade

Last Saturday, the 17^th March, was the Science Olympiad regional competition. We went there as a high school team and everybody had his own competitions to compete in. For me it was a rush, I hurried from one competition to the next one.. My competitions were:

1. Experimental Design - With Cindy Yu & Caitlin Acey
2. Optics - With Camden White
3. Thermodynamics - With Cindy Yu
4. Gravity Vehicle - With Cindy Yu
5. Sounds Of Music - With Jason Lim

All the teams.

How it came to so many competitions: In the beginning I just had four competitions: Experimental Design, optics, Fermi questions and thermodynamics. For Fermi questions I didn't had to learn anything. But then Logan Adams couldn't do it anymore and we had to mix it up. So it came down to three competitions: Experimental design, optics and thermodynamics. I was perfectly fine with that. But then Gravity Vehicle and Sound of Music “happened”...

- Gravity Vehicle: It was one week before the competition when Cindy came up to me and said: “I need somebody else to do this competition with me... Nathaniel never comes to the meetings and I can't do it alone... Lara can you please do it with me?” Me: “Sure...”

- Sounds of music: This was probably one of the most ironic situations ever. On the Wednesday (!!!) before the competition Rebecca went like: “I really need a partner for sound of music! I can't even play an instrument and we still have to build two instruments!” … “Please.”... Me: “Alright... I can do it, I guess..” Fine! So far it was alright. We wanted to make up a meeting for Friday. Then, on Friday morning, ONE DAY before the competition she came up to me with the following words: “Hey Lara, I am SO sorry, but I already do three (!) competitions so I won't have any time to do a fourth one. I'm so sorry but you have to find a new partner.” She excused the whole day through but anyways it was kind of dumb for me. I am so glad that Jason did it with me. By the way: Thank you for that Jason!


How it worked:

Our team-shirt... :D

- Experimental Design: Our task in experimental design was to perform an experiment and write it down. It was a mess.. Caitlin and Cindy should do the experiment while I am writing down what we are doing. Because our adviser came twenty minutes too late we were in a rush. After we all were finished and we compared we suddenly realized that I written something they actually didn't do in the procedure. I deleted everything and written it down supposedly right. Then they realized THEY did it wrong and I had to delete everything again. I don't know why but they had some weird data anyways and at that point I had to go because of the next competition. So I don't really have any clue how they both fixed the problem but I hope they did. Anyways, we didn't place in that competition.

Optics 3rd place.

- Optics: Optics was my favorite competition. It was really fun. Camden is a senior (12^th grade) anyways and he knows a lot. It was all about mirrors, lasers the human eye, light and that stuff. It was really, really awesome. One part of the competition was a multiple-choice test and the other part was about getting the light of a laser through a small area with three barriers by placing mirrors as close to a marked point on the other side. If I remember right we were about 7cm off this point what probably is very good! We made 3^rd place and I'm so happy about that!! The work until 1 am in the two nights before finally had his purpose.

- Thermodynamics: Thermodynamics was kind of a mess... We had to do a test about heat and that stuff and we didn't really have any plan what we were doing and guessed on most of the questions. Furthermore we had to prepare a box that mustn't be taller than 20cm x 20cm. She didn't really know what contains heat and I was just guessing on aluminum foil, many layers and air above the beaker. During the competition they put a water of 76 degrees Celsius into the beaker in the box and 76 degrees Celsius water into a beaker outside of the box on the fresh air. The fresh air was 22 degrees Celsius. Then we had to estimate how high the temperature would be after 20 minutes in both of the beakers. We said it would be 22 degrees in the outside beaker and 53 degrees in the inside beaker. The result was embarrassing... The temperature inside the box was almost the same as the temperature outside the box: 41 degrees Celsius. Our teacher Ms. Adkins said that this might have been because she gave us one beaker out of plastic for the outside and the other beaker was out of glass... However, the next time has to be much better.

- Gravity Vehicle: Another mess... For gravity vehicle we had to build an actual car with a ramp that travels five to ten meters. The advisers would give us the exact length for expected traveling during the competition before our first run. Then we were allowed to adjust or take away height. Anyways, I've been at Cindy's house the weekend before the competition to start that but we didn't get finished so it was her task (because her host father is good in things like that) to finish it until thursday because on Thursday I was supposed to come over to her house to try the car with the ramp. Well... She didn't finish it so that we couldn't try it on Thursday and I didn't have any idea of how it should work on Saturday. Furthermore she and her host father changed the wheels from normal wheels that I bought to wheels out of wood and they didn't work at all. Our car traveled like 2 meters.. It should have traveled 6.5 meters. I know, very bad... So we didn't place.

Jason and me with our instruments... :D

- Sounds Of Music: My loved one... Jason and me just did it to get some “extra points” for the team because you get points for already being there. Jason can't really read notes so it was a huge mess. We had to build two instruments, play a given song which was “St. Anthony's Chorale” and a chosen song which was “The Bad Necessities” from Jungle Book. On Friday we met after school and he stayed at my house until about 8:30 pm and we still didn't get finished. Our instruments were supposed to be creative and they mustn't contain any electrical stuff. And we only had three hours... So here comes my last-minute idea: For the first instrument we are going to glue straws together and cut them into different sizes, glue the end of it so that it makes a noise and finished! They want us to be creative... For the second instrument we're going to take some cans, two glasses and one plastic box and put different amount of stones into the cans, different amount of water into the classes and nothing into the box. We're going to hit on it with a pencil like a drum. Actually the practice on the Friday before the competition was really funny. I had a lot of fun while practicing. The competition though was SO embarrassing! We didn't get to practice a lot and we kind of messed up. Jason wasn't really able to play different notes on his instrument so he just hit random notes. We saw some of the other groups' instruments... They were all so fancy! They made whole tables out of wood with whatever kind of stuff on it... And what did we? Haha..! During the competition I cracked up. Jason and me were alone in a room with the tester and he asked us if we had any background-knowledge of music and actually we don't really because I can't understand most of the terms in English. However, he asked us a question I didn't get first so I didn't know the answer. Later on I understood and I would've known in german... However, he asked us to play the first song... I started playing and after about the first quarter of the song I cracked up. I couldn't stop laughing AT ALL! I just saw me blowing into straws and Jason hitting onto PEPSI cups... I cracked up, it was so funny. And it sounded so awful. Then we tried again. I cracked up again... Oh my gosh, this was so embarrassing. I couldn't stop. Maybe you know this feeling, I know Isabel does. It was the same with her and me as I dropped the french fries with Currywurst in our elevator. We couldn't stop.. It was bad, haha. The third time we finally kinda got it. I just tried to straighten up myself and in the end as I was nearly about to crack up again some girls were coming in to ask the tester a question. So as they were done I just said we've been done with the song too. This was our chosen song “The Bad Necessities”. The other song was even worse. Because Jason couldn't read notes and play them and the song was kinda hard to remember we decided that I would play it alone. It was bad I guess. But anyways we got some extra points for the team and this was probably the funniest competition!! I had a lot of fun during that one.

What comes now? Out of ten high school teams our team made 4th or 5th place (don't know for sure) which means that we're going to state!! The best teams of Kentucky are going to compete there. Camden and me made third place in optics and I hope we're going to do well at state too. Optics is actually the only competition I wanted to do... My first reaction that we're going to state was like: "Yeeees! Yeaaaaaaaaah!" My second reaction was: "No...! Noooooooooooo!" I have to do so much for thermodynamics, gravity vehicle and sounds of music... So wish me luck while studying until the 21^st of April...