User:Gz839918

Hi!! I'm a student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I enjoy physics and biology, but I also have background in various social sciences. My research interests include psychology and linguistics, but also acoustics. Despite my experience with physics events, I am still incredibly terrible at classical mechanics.

Science Olympiad is about people, not about winning! Indeed, science is about people, not winning, because science is the scaffolding of humanity—a skyscraper in ceaseless upward construction built to carry the common good of people. If you like helping people, so do I! So, if you'd like to talk about science or people or both, please don't hesitate to message me. (If you hesitate, you can still contact me anyways!)

Oh, and for those reading this for my credentials—I made it to states exactly once; I've been to nationals exactly once; I was the only senior member in my year to medal in nothing at nationals; and I've only competed for two years. You know—the usual thoroughfare.

Division D

 * Writer means I only wrote the test, but could not proctor it. Contributor means that I contributed test questions, but my role was not significant.

Most of the images and graphics I use in test questions are my own. You may consider any content I made in a test to be public domain. Most images that I use in tests but aren't my own are already in the public domain anyways. If copyrighted, those I attribute. If you don't know the copyright status of work used in my tests, ask me. Tests I've co-written are not necessarily fully in the public domain.

Errata

 * Carmel High School tryouts: for 16, the correct answer was not in (A) through (E), although the set of correct answers is in I through IV.


 * OSS Invitational C: question 31 should have also accepted the symbol in the answer, not just the two stacked numbers.


 * Raymond Park:  for 5, "greater" should replace "more" in choice (B). For 25, all choices with "and" should read "or" instead. 


 * Duke University Science Olympiad:  For 5, the order of the underlined quantities should be swapped above the choices. That is, the one on the left should be on the right, and vice versa. For 28, the question should read "hears" instead of "hear." 

Errata in italics indicate that the digital copy of the test originally released to teams (typically via Google Drive, DropBox, or OneDrive) now points to a version with this error corrected.

Do FPOWs benefit from attending the NC State tournament?
In 2019, the average Div. C FPOW had a placement of 21.737 (= 1239 / 57)

Interestingly, this means that FPOWs on average perform better than the average state-qualifying team in North Carolina (= 25.5). I assume no-shows for teams will be ranked below last place down to 50th when calculating my average for state-qualifying teams. This is to simplify calculation, but it is not unreasonable to believe that teams unable to participate in an event due to lack of interest or membership would probably worse in that particular event than teams who did participate. "Unreasonable," though, doesn't mean correct.

It is likewise possible that FPOWs that do not opt to attend the state tournament will perform worse than the average state-qualifying team. However, the conclusion still remains true that of those who do compete, the FPOW program is valuable in offering a second opportunity to students who show promise in an event.

Average FPOW scores for past years:

No-shows excluded in calculation of average; trial events included in average.

What is typically tested on a good circuit lab test?
Not everybody agrees on what makes a test high quality, nor do I believe all the tests listed below are high quality. It turns out that tests from well-regarded tournaments may differ notably. (Did you notice that one-fourth of points for the Princeton circuit lab test comes from recall questions?)

I struggled with op amps as a competitor, and after hearing from other students, it seems like two major stumbling points are op amps in addition to PN-junctions. If you want to practice these topics, the table can point you towards some tests that address these topics in particular.

All of these tests below are from the 2018-19 season (not 2019-20).


 * 1. Math, explanations, descriptions, comparison, concepts. If a question could be answered from recall but probably wasn't supposed to be (for example, unlikely to be memorized), then I categorized it as an FRQ.
 * 2. Including laboratory section

Do larger universities hold more teams per tournament?
No 

Lounges, dining halls, non-lecture performance halls have been excluded if possible. Special department-only classrooms are included.