Time to get serious!

Good morning all,

I attended coach's seminar yesterday and got lots of useful information to share with all of you.

There are 35 team's participating in the olympiad this year - that's 210 students! You can imagine the olympiad is going to be a tough one this year!

Logistics - Olympiad is on April 15, 2016 at Dougherty Valley High School , all day event from 8AM-6PM. 

There are 7 events at the Olympiad. In our team of 6 members, we will be diving each event into a pair of team members (3 sub-teams, each 2 member). The sub-team will have a responsibility to prepare for 1 theory event and 1 build event. Triathlon is attempted together as one team. Now before you come in tomorrow, please make sure you have an idea of what you'd want to do. Once we form the team, we won't have a chance to change at later point. 

Build Event 

We will discuss about this in our meetup tomorrow

▪ Battery Buggy - Competitors must design and construct a vehicle prior to competition that will travel 10.0 meters in a straight line. 

• The entire vehicle must fit within a 30 cm. x 30 cm. space when in ready to run configuration. There is no limit on the height of the vehicle.
• Competitors must start the vehicle by actuating a switch using a pen, pencil, dowel, or similar device (provided by Event Officials).

Scoring: Please refer to the presentation sent via email

See image here for an example:

▪ Goldberg’s Garage - Participants will design, build, bring, and test a Rube Goldberg- like Device, which incorporates Action Transfers and at least 4 of the 6 simple machines to accomplish a given task in 35 seconds.

What is Rube Goldberg device? Look at this

▪ Storm the Castle - A team of two (2) students will design and construct a trebuchet device to shoot a beanbag at a target that is placed within a given range

Theory Event

▪ Deep Sea, Tall Mountain - Students will answer questions involving content knowledge and process skills in the area of environmental science in test format.

 Number of Participants: 2 Time : 45 minutes

Topics of biology in 4th/5th grade textbooks will be covered in addition to the following advanced topics:

▪ Energy Flow (Pyramid)

▪ Symbiotic Relationships

▪ Cycles (Water, Carbon, Nitrogen)

▪ Population growth (Exponential/Logistic growth, Carrying Capacity, know how to read a population graph)

▪ Food chains/ Food webs

▪ Community interactions in general

Scoring : Questions will be assigned point values dependent on question difficulty. Students will be ranked from highest to lowest score. Ties will be broken with predetermined tiebreaker questions.

▪ Weather or Not - Students will answer questions involving content knowledge and process skills in the area of meteorology and geology in test format. 

Number of Participants: 2 Time : 45 minutes

Topics of weather and geology in 4th/5th grade textbooks will be covered in addition to the following advanced topics:

▪ Natural Phenomena and Disasters (ex- Tornados, Blizzards, etc.)

▪ Weather Patterns (ex- El Nino)

▪ Instruments used in Meteorology

▪ Rock Cycle

▪ Water Cycle

Scoring : Questions will be assigned point values dependent on question difficulty. Students will be ranked from highest to lowest score. Ties will be broken with predetermined tiebreaker questions.

▪ Science Jeopardy - The nature of the game is to choose a category and a level of difficulty from the game board and view and listen to an answer to a question. The first team to respond with an appropriate question for the answer will be awarded the specific number of points and will choose the next topics and level.

Approximate Time: Prelims – 45 min Final – 60 min

This round has a theory paper and an actual buzzer round (jeopardy)

This round goes a mile wide but only inch deep!

• A preliminary written test on general science will take place among all the teams (2 members from each team). The 3 highest teams in that written test will be selected to participate in the final round of Science Jeopardy.
• In Science Jeopardy, there are 5 categories of answers with values from 100 to 500. Difficulty of questions should increase with the point values.
• A category and point value will be chosen from the game board and the answer revealed. The event supervisor will present the answer on a projector so that all the teams can see it at the same time and read the answer.
• The first team to respond must provide the correct question. If it is not correct, the other teams then have a chance to provide the correct question.
• After the first two rounds, Final Jeopardy will be played. In this round, there is only one question and the teams can choose how many points they wish to wager. If they answer correctly they gain the wagered points, if they answer incorrectly, they will lose the wagered points.

Scoring : The team with the highest score wins. Ties will be broken by asking a tiebreaker set of 3 questions. The team that answers more questions correctly faster than the other team will break the tie.

Common for all team members

▪ Triathlon - Three physical skills are interspersed with science questions in an obstacle course that will be run in relay race style. Consists of a Question-Answer challenge and a physical challenge (For ex: Solve these 5 science questions and perform x jump ropes as fast as you can!)

Here is how the logistic going to play on the day on Olympiad.

We're Q - Quail Run. Here is how it plays up. For ex: If you look at the time slot of 9-10AM

The pair team who would take battery buggy, can't take science jeopardy since the two events are at the same time. Similarly the team that is working on Goldberg's garage can't take Deep Sea. Clear? May be not, I'll explain when we meet in person. 

Scoring

• The total team time to complete the event as well as the number of correct answers will be taken into account.
• Speed rankings will be converted into points. (Fastest team is team 1 and so receives 1 point, team 2 gets 2 points, and so on).
• The number of missed questions will be added to the team’s points. (If team 1 missed 5 questions, their score is now 6).
• The team with the lowest score will be first place and the team with the highest score is last place

Final Scoring

• The ranks of the team in all events will be added up.

• The team with the lowest score is first place, and the team with the highest score is last place.