User:Mrgreencacti

Mrgreencacti was a student at Jeffrey Trail Middle School in the 2016-2017 and 2017-2018 years. He joined Science Olympiad in his 8th-grade year (2017-2018) and was on the "Blue Team," or competition team for all competitions. He was part of the first generation of students at Jeffrey Trail to win first place in the Southern California State Tournament and advance to the National Tournament.

In the 2018-2019 year, he tried out and got onto the Portola High School Science Olympiad team as a freshman along with a lot of his other Jeffrey Trail peers. From there, he was chosen to be on the main competition team (the "A Team") for the 2018-2019 and 2019-2020 years, where he remains currently. At the moment, he is preparing for the rest of the competition season.



8th Grade - 2017-2018
Note: From this point forth, Mrgreencacti will not have any placings at nationals because Troy exists.

Event Description and Experience
This section goes over the experience that Mrgreencacti had in each of his main events.

Hovercraft
Mrgreencacti was in Hovercraft in 8th grade. He chose hovercraft mostly because the name sounded cool to him at the time. He started off learning the basics of what was on the rules and was taught by a certain unnamed mentor kinematics and collisions. This was his first exposure to physics. Around the same time, a hovercraft demonstration was done by a more experienced science Olympian. At the time, he mostly thought that it was loud.

Having been second best in weekly testing for the study portion of the event, Mrgreencacti was chosen to be on the blue team for Hovercraft. He continued to study the mechanical physics involved with the event, writing numerous practice tests. He also spent many hours afterschool with his partner (who actually built the hovercrafts), testing, mainly for balance, arranging the penny stacks and bolts in different positions so that the hovercraft travelled the distance of 60 cm at around the target time of 15 seconds. It was frustrating work -- the hovercrafts were inconsistent in their performance, which varied greatly depending on the level of the batteries, which, upsettingly, ran out of power very quickly and had to be recharged frequently.

At his first ever invitational at Ladera Vista, Mrgreencacti (with the help of his partner) earned his first ever medal -- 2nd place. From there, they placed at every competition except for regionals (bad luck) and nationals (7th place!).

Trophy History
Note: Trophies shown were earned collectively on various teams that Mrgreencacti was a part of. These are by no means achievements of Mrgreencacti alone.