User:Alchenmax

I competed from 2022-2024 in Division B for Sierra Vista Middle School I mainly competed for Sierra Vista's 2nd team(red) for the 2022-2023 season, but competed for varsity team(black) for numerous competitions, where I filled for User:Mich. I also competed for Sierra Vista's 3rd team(grey) for 2 tournaments. My main events were Dynamic Planet, Rocks and Minerals, and Solar System for this season, but I filled in for a couple of extra events, such as Roller Coaster in Kennedy and Codebusters in Highlands. The trial events that I competed in for this season includes Geoguessr from Rickards, Science Quiz Bowl for BirdSO, and Pokemology and Applied Math for Lexington. In my 2023-2024 Season, I competed as Sierra Vista's black team and I compete in Reach for the Stars, Optics, Air Trajectory, and Fast Facts. The only trial event I have done in this season was Geoguessr for Rickards again. My event rankings, including trials(but no fillers), from worst to best is: Applied Math, Air Trajectory, Dynamic Planet, Geoguessr, Optics, Solar System, Science Quiz Bowl, Fast Facts, Reach for the Stars, and Rocks and Minerals.

I now go to Troy High School, where I tried for Astronomy, Optics, and Geological Mapping (will not make it in).

alchenmax
General Information
Years in SO	2
Grade	9th
State	SoCal
Division	C
Medals
Total medals	98 85 invitational medals 6 regional medals 6 state medals 1 national medal
Social Media
Discord	Why are you looking?

2022-2023 Season

SV Scrimmage is an unofficial competition.

	Individual	Zest	Zest	Red	Red	Grey	Grey	Black	Black	Red	Red	Red	Red	Red	Black	Black	Black	Red
	SV Scrimmage	Highlands	Georgia	UTA	Rickards	Dodgen	Belleville	Boyceville	Camas	Rustin	Dennis Papesh(2)	Mira Loma	BirdSO	Kennedy	BirdSO Satellite	OC Regionals	SoCal Joint State	Lexington
Rocks and Minerals	3rd	4th	6th	3rd	3rd	4th	Unknown	2nd	2nd	Unknown	Unknown	2nd	3rd	3rd	3rd	1st	1st	3rd
Solar System	6th	30th	4th	4th	17th	Unknown	Unknown	2nd	2nd	Unknown	Unknown	5th	2nd	5th	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
Dynamic Planet	4th (1)	11th	17th	2nd	N/A	Unknown	Unknown	1st	2nd	Unknown	Unknown	3rd	5th	N/A	17th	2nd	3rd	4th
Science Quiz Bowl	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	10th	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A

1: I was awarded 3rd due to a grading error, but this will not count as a medal

2: Got 2 medals but I can't find the results

2023-2024 Season

SV Scrimmage and JOKRS are not official.

	Individual	Jansari	Individual	Jansari	Chargers	Optimism	Red	Red	Red	Red	Red	Black	Black	Black	Black	Black	Black	Black	Black	2024	Black	2024	SV
	SV Scrimmage	Highlands	JOKRS	Georgia	Rickards	Dodgen	Bay Academy	Dick Smith	Boyceville	Camas	Rustin	Troy	BirdSO	Stemboost	Horace Greeley	SV Invitational	BirdSO Satellite	OC Regionals	OCSA	Jordan	SoCal Joint State Tournament	Lexington Invitational	2024 National Tournament
Air Trajectory	6th	Untested	5th	Untested	10th	9th	Untested	5th	11th	1st	Unknown	1st	3rd	2nd	6th	3rd	35th(2)	2nd	4th	10th(2)	1st	1st	7th
Optics	4th	9th	6th	5th	17th	6th1	4th	1st	1st	2nd	1st	2nd	1st	3rd	3rd	1st	13th	1st	1st	2nd	1st	2nd	24th (1)probably
Reach For The Stars	4th	4th	3rd	Unknown	5th	1st	3rd	1st	2nd	7th	4th	1st	1st	3rd	2nd	2nd	2nd	2nd	3rd	2nd	1st	2nd	1st
Fast Facts	1st	5th	5th	4th	6th	2nd	3rd	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	3rd	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	16th	1st	3rd	5th	2nd	3rd	10th
Trial Events (only placed ones)
Materials Science	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	1st	N/A

1: Misgraded LS

2: Chamber leaked

2023-2024 Season Recap

SV Scrimmage

This began as the low point of my season, where I received only one medal. I was unsure of what the tests would look like, as I had not attended the summer camp for science olympiad for our school. Everyone got tiered in air trajectory, which although was a bit unfair, gave us an insight on how to not get tiered in future competitions. For RFTS, everyone thought that the test was extremely hard, but when we retook it, it turned out that all concepts on the test were very fundamental. Optics had an easy multiple choice section, and an absolutely grueling free response/calculation section, while I did pretty badly on optics box. The only event that went well for me was Fast Facts, where I ended up with a 1st. I got a 4th in RFTS and Optics and a 6th in Atj. Although my rankings were low, it showed me who I was competing against. The tests didn't seem well written at the time, but as we got better, I saw that we all just slacked. 6/10

Highlands

This was my best scrimmage competitions by far, as I ended up with a 9th in optics(3rd in sv), 4th in reach(2nd in sv), 5th in FF(1st in sv), and a 3rd in an unofficial Atj tournament at the time. I believe that these placings were by pure luck though.

Anyways, the Optics test was extremely simple, and I was 2 points away from the top score in the team(LeNoob18), with a 40/46 in the test. At this time of year, I solved ray tracing diagram calculations by scaling the object and image distance, which did not work. The RFTS test, on the other hand, was hard and a bit off-specs in sharp contrast to optics. I somehow ended up being about 3 points behind LeNoob18 in RFTS. I took FF with a partner, where my strategy in FF consisted of thinking of words that go in with the categories on spot, which actually worked decently. 5/10

JOKRS

This was my worst scrimmage by far. I only placed in reach because of a no-show by one of the SV kids. I tied for the highest optics test score, but failed my laser shoot so I ended up getting 6th. My AT broke the day before JOKRS, and my repairs were not sufficient, so I ended up getting 5th. I got a shot spot on 2 meters, but the bad news was that the target was 3 meters. The graders vastly misgraded my FF test and I ended up getting 5th.

The RFTS test was taken straight from the Astronomy rules for Div C. The tiebreakers, which was to list as many digits of pi and euler's number as possible, originally was 1 point per correct digit, were revised for obvious reasons and were not well implemented or considered. The optics test was ok, but it was the first time I used my 5 mirror stencil, and I didn't see that the back of one of my mirrors was blocking the laser, effectively causing me to fail laser shoot. My air chamber broke during highlands, and by the time I replaced it, it wasn't powerful enough to shoot for 8 meters, and I failed the event miserably. The FF test was challenging, and it was the first time I didn't place in the event. Overall, I had the worst results for this scrimmage and the quality of the scrimmage was also bad. 2/10

Georgia

I got my first 1st in SV in my main events(got 5th place), which was optics. The bad news was that I ended up not placing in RFTS. I still did end up with a 1st in sv for FF(4th). The tests were middling but decent quality.

The RFTS test was on-specs and good quality, so I didn't place. The optics test was decent, but a lot of the questions on the test asked for color theory, which is subjectively the most confusing topic in optics, as there are many different answers to the same color combination that make sense. FF went similarly to Highlands. 5/10

Rickards

There is not much to say about this tournament other than the fact that I did not do very well against the rest of SV. I ended up with 3 medals, with a 5th in reach, a 6th in FF, and a 10th in AT. And I got rickrolled in Anything Goes.

The RFTS test was written by Aptdon, and subsequently ended up being a hard test. The optics test had over 5 20 point questions, and was a low quality test in general. AT went average, as I was using my AT device, which wasn't a very good idea. 4/10

Dodgen

This was our first in person invitational, and it was very mixed. The tests ended up being very simple, but since it was the beginning of the year, it was expected. I got a 9th in AT, a 2nd in FF, and a 1st in RFTS. I would have gotten a 4th or 3rd in optics, but my laser shoot was misgraded by 1 mirror, and I got a 6th instead.

Beforehand, I was terrible at making design logs and did not get full design logs scores for most scrimmages. I never brought the AT device after Dodgen. The test for RFTS was particularly simple, and asked for surface level questions from the rules, and I was able to answer all the questions along with my partner. Optics was a long test with a 3D model of the eye for us to identify the parts. There were many questions on the back where I had none of the formulas for the questions. We went to Dave and Busters afterwards, and my current day partner is cracked at centipede. 6/10

Bay Academy

The tests were decent, and I did pretty decent. There is not too much to say.

My partner for this competition is my partner for the stacked lineups season, and we did pretty well in our events with a 3rd in RFTS and a 4th in Optics, as well as a 3rd in FF with a different partner. We were contemplating on which cheat sheet we should use for RFTS, and my CS had info that was directly on the test. Optics was a decent test that we did ok on, with a 4th overall but being highest placement for school. FF was also an easy test that I don't remember. 4/10

Dick Smith and Boyceville

There is nothing to say besides the fact that I began developing my 6 mirror laser shoot strategy.

I lied, my partner was LeNoob18, who was number 1 for our group at the time. We did very well for study events for both invitationals, although we did worse in AT. We hit 6 mirrors in laser shoot with a decent accuracy score for both invitationals, and the tests were easy for DSM and Boyceville. 4/10

Camas

The tests were very difficult, and I ended up not placing in RFTS. We had 40 minutes to do optics, which was clearly not enough time for the difficulty of the test.

7/10

Rustin

Rustin was hilariously badly run. They copied half of their reach test from highlands, and held a virtual laser shoot that was much easier to do than an in person LS. The website for LS was created with Github, and one of my friends copied the code to keep it. 1/10

Troy

My trajectory for the rest of the season was set by this competition. I got a 1st in RFTS and AT, a 2nd in Optics, and a 3rd in FF. The tests were difficult but asked on-topic questions.

BirdSO

Everyone keeps saying that this tournament is overrated, but from last year's experience, it should have been much greater than the experience I got from my 8th grade year. Anyways I don't care because I got 2 1sts and a 3rd for this event. The laser for laser shoot was angled off by 2 cm, but we somehow still got a score of 49.8 in LS. I didn't think much of the actual invitational, but since I did well I'm ranking it high. 8/10

OCSA

My greatest takeaway from this tournament was that our reach test was horrendously misgraded and we got 3rd in Reach. We got 1st in Optics, even though the test was really hard. AT was also misgraded, as by calculations we should have gotten 6105 points, but we ended with a score less than 6000, which was enough to move us to 4th. Fast facts was extremely hard and the highest score was a 354. I am still salty about the grading so 3/10.

SoCal Joint State Tournament

This was the first time I had ever gotten 1sts for all 3 of my main events. I got 5 mirrors + barrier and 2 cm off for LS, and made both buckets for AT. 10/10

Full Narrative: This was the competition that we had been anticipating for a long time. It began with me getting 30 minutes of sleep 2 days before states. I skipped most of the study session on Friday for our school as a result, but I did practice laser shoot and AT a few times. Before states, the air chamber had complications and shot over 20 cm off for shots that were supposed to be within 5 cm off, which threatened to ruin our AT run at states. However, the chamber worked perfectly at states, and not only did we hit both buckets, we got about 8 cm off for near target and 12 cm off for far target. Our score was very close to Fulton, who also got 2 buckets and good target scores, but we ended up getting 1st anyways. For optics, our LS was 2 cm off, and I thought that we may lose to El Rancho or Jeffrey Trails, but we still ended up getting 1st. For FF, I lost to OCSA, which was the one event that kept me from getting 1sts for all events.

Nationals

1 1st in RFTS

When the events that happened before and after nationals matter more to me than the actual competition, you know that the competition was run poorly. Although our school ended up with a 6th, I could not care less about the rest of my team. In AT the proctors did not let us use blue painters tape, reasoning that it would damage the floor, even though we used the exact same tape brand as them and blue painters tape was used to create the AT markings. Optics was terribly run, and the test was not close to the quality of a national level test. I have no copium for FF, but I'm content with my placing in that event.

If you ask me, I'm honestly happy that SV got much lower than many other schools would've expected. It reflects a serious error in the roster, which was never bothered to be changed to optimize the team, and SV will not admit that some people should not have belonged on the national team.

Event Tier List

S - Rocks and Minerals, Reach For The Stars, Fast Facts

B - Solar System

C - Optics

F - Air Trajectory, DP

These rankings are 100% objective so get mad if you don't agree with me.

Dynamic Planet(hydrology): Many people I know find something they like about a lot of DP topics. This is not one of them. I think most people who had done the event in my school can agree that they hate this event. 0.5/10

Air Trajectory: It is satisfying to do if you succeed, and it is interesting for a build event. However, it is a build event, so I hate it and so do most people who do the event in my school. 1/10

Optics: I have mixed feelings about this event. On one side, the study can be fun at times and laser shoot can be great. On the other side, the study section can get boring and laser shoot can be a failure. People can make arguments that I have skill issue, but I just find optics inconsistent. I am beginning to appreciate the study part of Optics more though. 4/10

Solar System: Despite not being very good at the event, I still enjoyed it. I don't remember a lot from my experience with solar, but I believe that it was more fun to take than optics. 5/10

Fast Facts: I started this event in the 2023-2024 season, and many topics of FF were relevant to many topics that I have studied searching for a life in school and education, which is mainly why I enjoy the event. There isn't anything more satisfying in study events than to fill a fast facts grid entirely. It is the only event that I did not have problems with at the beginning of the season, and it is also an extra chance for a medal in every invitational. 9/10

Reach for the Stars: solar system but better. The topic is relatively broad, which gives a lot of room to study. My only complaint is logarithms and decimal exponents without calculators. 9/10

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THATDINOSAURKlD -

LeNoob18

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