Idaho 2018

[RoboStudent]

Do any of you want to meet up at the Starbucks after the events?

[IdahoSciGuy]

Was a Heck of a fun day today! I ended up proctoring Solar System and Herpetology today! I'm actually still grading solar system, so I've got a bit to go!

[MissAmargasaurus]

Wow, what a great day! I'm so so excited to be attending nationals again! Everything seemed great, I'm really happy with how well hosting was at BSU. Can't wait to see how it improves next year. And our team finished with 36 points, wow!

Now for my thoughts on each of my events.

Herpetology (1st): Very well run event! The stations were a great change after having powerpoints for a few years. I found the questions to be of a good difficulty, not too easy but also not so hard you couldn't answer for a majority of them. There were only 6 questions I believe that me and my partner could not answer/ran out of time for, 2 minutes surprisingly was enough time for almost every station! I think the only criticism I would have is that I found the station rotation to be confusing at the beginning, but as the event went on it got easier. I'd suggest marking the paper bags/backs of the paper with the station number in order to make things go smoothly in the future, and that I think the answer sheet could of had more room for writing as some of the scientific names can get VERY long.

Experimental Design (1st): Also well run! I was not expecting that topic, I assumed we'd probably get something based on flight considering the large room. Having the rubric available was both good and bad I feel, haha! It was helpful to have (especially for keeping things in order) considering we did not have a template to write on, but at the same time it did remove the competitive edge a team can have from having the rubric memorized. Sorry to whoever got our materials, I couldn't untie the knot on the washers, oops!

Ecology: (2nd): Not bad, but also not great too, y'know? I found the test to be a bit too easy, with only 2-3 questions that I feel were hard enough for a state level. I think the length of it could of been doubled, along with math questions as there were none on it. It was a nice test though, I was just hoping for something more challenging.

[Tailsfan101]

Final results:
Division B
1. Treasure Valley Homeschool (114)
2. St. Joseph's Catholic School (126)
3. St. Joseph's Catholic School (143)
4. St. Joseph's Catholic School (184)
5. Sacred Heart Catholic School (194)

Division C
1. Treasure Valley Homeschool (36)
2. Twin Falls High School (83)
3. Bishop Kelly High School (95)
4. Rigby High School (98)
5. Weiser High School (108)

For reference, Division B had 31 teams, while Division C had just 13. I'm very happy my B predictions ended up wrong.

[MissAmargasaurus]

Bless you Tails I only had pictures of the results for division C and couldn't find the scores for division B, I updated the post in the state results thread so it has that for the B teams too now.

[RoboStudent]

In case you guys were wondering I was the one person that came to accept the trophy for BK

[MissAmargasaurus]

In case you guys were wondering I was the one person that came to accept the trophy for BK

Aw I saw that! What happened to the rest of your team? Good job competing today though!

[RoboStudent]

In case you guys were wondering I was the one person that came to accept the trophy for BK

Aw I saw that! What happened to the rest of your team? Good job competing today though!

Some had prom and the rest just didn’t want to stay.

[Nerd_Bunny]

Yay! We're gonna be representing Idaho at nationals!! I'm really happy with the tournament this year at BSU- everything seemed to go really well!

Here are my thoughts on the events I did:

Anatomy and Physiology (1): This test followed the rules well. None of the questions were something I didn't think followed the rules. The proctors were very nice, and the test was a good length. I wish there had been a few more questions about diseases though- we didn't get very many!

Chemistry Lab (1): All the questions followed the rules, but the lab portion was different. Instead of us doing a lab, we watched the event supervisors do a lab and then answered questions about it. I was really sad to not be able to do a lab- we've been training a lot to do one! Also, the lab topic, titration, was something I'd never seen before. The way they had us analyze it was strange, and I wasn't quite sure if that part followed the rules or not. But the rest of the questions were representative of the rules, and the proctors were very nice and friendly.

Disease Detectives (1): A short and sweet test. The questions weren't too difficult, but represented the rules well. Like all the other events, the proctors were very nice and helpful. They did have the same test for B and C division though, so there weren't any statistics questions like we'd been hoping for.

In all, we had a very good competition day! It was very fun, and BSU was a great location for it!

[Tailsfan101]

Here's my ratings on the tests I took:

Crime Busters (1) - The test certainly lacked some things, as chromatography was completely absent, and the plastics were already shown. Also, if you wanted to test unknowns with water, HCl, or iodine, you had to bring your samples to the front of the room. However, there were 14 unknowns, including two mixtures, which seems to be a good amount for our state. The test itself was well written, and the way the unknowns applied to the suspects had a nice chemistry (pun intended).

Road Scholar (1) - This test seemed to have the perfect length, with 33 questions in all, plus map drawing and a stream gradient. The questions varied in difficulty, from "What county is this in?" to finding coordinates. The test used one highway map and three quadrangle maps, all which fitted the questions perfectly. Overall, this was a well done test. (I'm especially proud of my partner for doing an amazing job on the map drawing!)

Disease Detectives (2) - This test was fairly short (only seven pages long), but the questions seemed to cover many aspects of this event. The test included multiple outbreak scenarios, but asked different questions about each one. The only problem was they gave the same test to Division B and Division C, which decreased the difficulty for C especially (as Nerd_Bunny pointed out).

Microbe Mission (3) - This test had a great length to it, and the questions showed a good variety. Interestingly, in a section where it required me to label different bacterial shapes, the funny thing is that I had the exact same diagram on my cheat sheet that they used, only without labels. Unfortunately, there was nothing about diseases on the entire test, which was very disappointing to me.

Go homeschoolers!