Rocks & Minerals B/C

[gneissisnice]

I'm seriously gonna see if I can write the Rocks and Minerals event for next year at Nationals (either division would be good), I've been hearing too many horror stories of bad events and I really really wanna go to Orlando next year, haha. Anyone have any idea how to go about that?

Seems like this is a good time to repeat the advice I regularly give out to graduating seniors who ask how they can get involved at the national level of SO:

The first thing to do is to contact your state SO director and volunteer to help out (http://soinc.org/state_directors_list). You can also volunteer to help at the national tournament each year by going to the national tournament website (it changes each year.. check soinc.org). Once you've helped out for a couple years you'll end up meeting various people on the committee and hopefully will be invited back to help out some more. At some point you just kind of get invited to the rules meetings. It's all about networking and continuing to volunteer and making your presence known.

I've actually been the New York state supervisor for Rocks and Minerals/Fossils for the past few years, so I've already got that covered. Thanks for the advice.

[iYOA]

yeah when it finished, the supervisor mentioned that cinnabar and kyanite were two that were not on the list but on the test and stibnite looks like it was the antimony ore.

Someone told me that one of the samples was turquoise, not sure of the veracity of that rumor.

okay my partner said that he remembered the event supervisor also mention turquoise being on it. So that rumor is confirmed.
Im pretty sure we put amazonite for that one although i do remember being a little bit confused b/c the crystal system was off.

Does anyone know if the test will be posted online? I think we scored at least 89% but i would like to check answers to figure out what it actually was.

[chalker]

Does anyone know if the test will be posted online? I think we scored at least 89% but i would like to check answers to figure out what it actually was.

The national tests are always available the next year in the test packets sold online at the official SO store (soinc.org)

[10manwire]

The national tests are always available the next year in the test packets sold online at the official SO store (soinc.org)

Would it be possible for the samples used at nationals be posted online/in the packet next year? (since that hasn't usually been in the packet in the past...)

[sciencegeek100]

The national tests are always available the next year in the test packets sold online at the official SO store (soinc.org)

Would it be possible for the samples used at nationals be posted online/in the packet next year? (since that hasn't usually been in the packet in the past...)

they don't do that on study events involving samples... plus rocks and minerals would be fairly useless in a black and white print

I did this event back in 2008. How many Qs were on the National test... how many per station.... what was the quality of the samples???

[Luo]

The national tests are always available the next year in the test packets sold online at the official SO store (soinc.org)

Would it be possible for the samples used at nationals be posted online/in the packet next year? (since that hasn't usually been in the packet in the past...)

they don't do that on study events involving samples... plus rocks and minerals would be fairly useless in a black and white print

I did this event back in 2008. How many Qs were on the National test... how many per station.... what was the quality of the samples???

Last year, the event supervisor (Linder Winter) sent a document with commentary and analysis from the event to all competitors who requested it. He also sent the list of specimens and a list of the top scores. It's too bad the event supervisor this year (Boyd Grayson) didn't make the same offer. Anyway, for the Division C event, there were 100 questions at 20 stations, 2 minutes per station. I thought the samples were of good quality. Identification (at least for the samples on the official list) was not particularly difficult.

[gneissisnice]

The national tests are always available the next year in the test packets sold online at the official SO store (soinc.org)

Would it be possible for the samples used at nationals be posted online/in the packet next year? (since that hasn't usually been in the packet in the past...)

they don't do that on study events involving samples... plus rocks and minerals would be fairly useless in a black and white print

I did this event back in 2008. How many Qs were on the National test... how many per station.... what was the quality of the samples???

Well, just a sample list would be nice, but it's usually not included. Makes it a pain in the butt to set up a practice event, you have to go through each question and see what sample(s) it requires.