Science Olympiad at Penn State Div C Invitational (SOAPS)

[sciolyperson1]

Good luck at competition tomorrow!

[KingDJ777]

Does anyone know where the award ceremony link is? Or did they delay the award ceremony to a later date?

I cannot seem to find the link, but maybe that's because our coach hasn't sent us the email yet lol

[KingDJ777]

Does anyone know where the award ceremony link is? Or did they delay the award ceremony to a later date?

I cannot seem to find the link, but maybe that's because our coach hasn't sent us the email yet lol

Delayed to 9 est

[KingDJ777]

Does anyone know where the award ceremony link is? Or did they delay the award ceremony to a later date?

I cannot seem to find the link, but maybe that's because our coach hasn't sent us the email yet lol

Delayed to 9 est

Thank you!! And do you happen to have the link?

[zsg11]

Hello all!

Apologies for the delay, but here is our awards link!! It'll premiere at 9pm Eastern on our Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQGloK ... yexFcyO-OA.

Hope to see you there:)

Zoe

[sciolyperson1]

Awards spreadsheet at https://duosmium.org/soapstracker

[zsg11]

Full results: https://duosmium.org/results/2021-02-06 ... tational_c

[RobertYL]

Event Supervisor Review

Hello everyone! My name is Robert Lee and I was the Astronomy co-ES (with Pranit Mohnot), the Fermi Questions co-ES (with Yifan Lu), and the Digital Structures ES. Thank you to all of the teams who competed (there were a lot of you)! This invitational was a blast to supervise for and I hope I can return next year.

Astronomy

Statistics:
Mean: 56.7 (28.4%)
Median: 53 (26.5%)
St. Dev.: 32.2
Max: 140 (70.0%)

Graphs:

Astronomy_C-Distributions.png

More in-depth statistics and graphs pertaining to sections and specific questions can be found at this link.

Thoughts:
This test was extremely rigorous, both in terms of length and difficulty. Pranit and I intended this test to have a wide variety of questions to make it as comprehensive as possible, with capstone investigative questions at the end of sections A and C (100% kudos to Pranit). As expected, the scores were low, relative to the points possible; however, we tried our best to sort sections in order of difficulty and I hope teams were able to work as far as they could in each section. More easy-medium difficulty questions would have better separated the teams, but I hope teams can use this test as a resource for future studying.

• Section A (General Knowledge) started with a few easy multiple choice questions and ramped up from there. Teams scored well in the multiple choice section and in the first two questions in the free response section. The last two questions were a lot trickier, with advanced topics of gravitational waves and stellar fusion. We hope teams learned something new!
• Section B (Deep-Sky Objects) was written by myself, Robert. I believe this was the best DSO section I've written all year and I hope teams liked it. I tried to change things up from the basic "ID object", "give a fact", "give another fact" sort of question and really test competitors on the value of the object (what discoveries it led to, the consequences of these discoveries, etc.). However, I did try to sprinkle in some freebie questions to reward those who did the research. The more conceptual questions like B4d, B6c-d, B7b-e were what set apart the strongest competitors (scoring above 40/60 pts. Congrats!).
• Section C (Calculations) was mostly written by Pranit, except for C8 (the Faber-Jackson question), which I wrote. Like section A, we started off with straight-forward multiple choice questions, moved on to the typical calculations (parallax, Stefan-Boltzmann, Hubble's law, etc.), and ended with the hardest questions C8 and C9. I was pleasantly surprised that many teams attempted C8 and many teams were able to score decently on it, with a few teams successfully completing the algebra for C8c. Finally, C9 was a monster of a question. Pranit wrote an amazing question that led you down the process Jocelyn Bell Burnell used to determine that pulsars were spinning neutron stars. Even if you didn't get to this question, I would highly recommend looking through it, because it's super interesting.

I would like to thank Pranit Mohnot for carrying me and making this test amazing. Also, I would like to thank Ben Zydney and Dhruva Karkada for helping us grade (couldn't have done it without you two!).

Test Folder:
The exam and all other material can be found in this folder. Currently, the solutions manual has not been added to the folder. We will be adding it within the week, with a comprehensive walkthrough of section C.

Fermi Questions

Statistics:
Mean: 88.5 (44.3%)
Median: 85 (42.5%)
St. Dev.: 21.4
Max: 137 (68.5%)

Graphs:

Fermi_Questions_C-Distributions.png

More in-depth statistics and graphs pertaining to sections and specific questions can be found at this link.

Thoughts:
This was my first time writing/ES-ing for Fermi Questions and I had a lot of fun. I found that teams liked the variety of questions (although we could have added a few astronomy-based questions). The test was 40 questions long, but perhaps a 60 question test could have separated teams better and introduced a wider variety of questions with 20+ easy-medium difficulty ones (just a thing to note for the future). I hope to continue writing for this event, so feedback is greatly appreciated!

Almost all of the credit must go to Yifan, who wrote the vast majority of the questions along with doing the tiring task of grading all of the tests. Also, thank you to the 44 teams who took this test and keep this amazing event alive.

Test Folder:
The exam and all other material can be found in this folder.

Digital Structures

Thoughts:
I don't have too much to say about this event, so I'm just leaving this here for completion sake. Just want to make a quick reminder that teams should pay attention to the parameters and make sure that they are not in violation of them. A few teams scored well, but were on the wrong side of the cutoff and were placed in Tier 2. That's pretty much it. Thanks to the teams who tried out this new trial event! (especially to the ones who did this event for their first time yesterday)

Test Feedback

If you have feedback for either test, feel free to leave it here! I would appreciate it a ton, since feedback helps a lot with gauging what I need to adjust in my tests. The test codes are as follows:

• Astronomy: 2021SOAPS-AstronomyC-Carbon
• Fermi Questions: 2021SOAPS-FermiQuestionsC-Chess

[Giantpants]

Codebusters: (6th)
I was only a filler for this event so I can't give a proper review, but the 2nd(?) bacon was kinda long. 9/10.

Digital Structures: (1st)
Not much to say about this event. Had a great time participating as always! 10/10.

Fermi Questions: (3rd)
The test was on the easier(?) side but well suited for a trial-beginner difficulty. Builderguy135/AC and I enjoyed taking the test a lot. A few of the questions were pretty common (we took a 20 minute practice test right before and knew 52 factorial right off the bat). But overall really solid. 10/10.

Vehicle Design: (1st)
Cruz and Arman did a great job running this event! I enjoyed the quick interview and everything went smoothly. 10/10.

Overall: (1st)
Great tournament, great awards, and great volunteers! Props to the entire SOAPS team for putting such a great tournament together! Although there were some minor delays, the quality of tests and competition made up for it! Looking forward to coming back next year in person!

[Giantpants]

Event review!

Cybersecurity (26)
My partner and I totally memed the event without any preparation, so I'm not exactly qualified to comment on quality. However, I got the impression that it was well-written based on the diversity of the questions presented.

Dynamic Planet (36)
Don't have much to say, it was quite well-written and covered all topics decently well. It was rather long, but that may just be me being bad at the event

Experimental Design (22)
I'm not particularly experienced with the event, so I don't have a lot of reference points to judge it against, but I do appreciate the sheer variety of experiments that could be conducted based on the available resources.

Fermi Questions (Trial) (8)
As above, I have very little experience in this event, but it was fun to get another shot at it. I am surprised that it was the only event I medaled in, though...

Geologic Mapping (10)
Content-wise, I think it was quite good. I do like that the test included more math and "application of theory" (not sure exactly how to phrase that) than I'm used to, which really helps put in perspective what I truly understand versus can only do simple recall for. It was a bit long, but that may also be a factor of poor time management.

Machines (9)
The test was decent and covered all topics quite well and with a satisfactory amount of detail. The test did edge on the simpler side, as I felt that it was lacking in truly challenging questions that would be more time consuming (as opposed to a barrage of simpler questions). Also, the diagrams could've perhaps at least been drawn with a straightedge and/or circle tool...

Sounds of Music (37)
As noted pretty much across the board, I enjoy the diversity and comprehensiveness offered by the test. It did feel a little bit trivia-based now and again, but nothing was a major issue in that regard. The scale of difficulties was also quite good. Again, it felt somewhat long, but this is also probably poor time management on my end.

Overall (28)
I had a superb time with SOAPS! Of course there were some technical difficulties here and there, but excellent work to the SOAPS team for putting on such an amazing tournament! Even with some of the limitations and issues, the tournament felt super smooth and well-oiled. If only I could come back to compete again...