User:EwwPhysics

EwwPhysics
General Information
Years in SO	3
Current Team	Lower Merion High School
Grade	11th
Past Team(s)	Bala Cynwyd Middle School
State	PA
Division	C
Scioly.org Information
Forum profile	EwwPhysics
Exalted	1x
Medals
Total medals	34 18 invitational medals 7 regional medals 7 state medals 2 national medals
Competitor Info
Competitions attended	17 12 invitationals 3 regionals 2 states 1 national

Hi! I'm currently a captain at Lower Merion High School (class of 2024) and my middle school was Bala Cynwyd Middle School. I'm mostly passionate about computer science and molecular biology.

rip my 4-events-at-every-comp streak :/

EwwPhysics attends Lower Merion High School.

EwwPhysics attended Bala Cynwyd Middle School.

EwwPhysics has been exalted 1 time.

PAEwwPhysics competes in Southeast Pennsylvania.

This user checks the Scioly Forums daily!

This user wonders if bernard will be there.

EwwPhysics won "Most Helpful Div. B" in the 2020 Scioly.org Superlatives.

Results (Please Don't Judge)

Charts of Results

Medals are colored in and bolded. The places which medalled may differ between competitions. For example, at regionals in 2020 I got 7th in two events. Only top 4 medalled so these are not colored in or bolded, even though 7th place at other competitions such as Rustin would have been a medal.
If the competition was split into AA and AAA divisions (i.e. Rustin), I put my overall placing, not my placing within the division that I was in.

2019-2020 (8th Grade, Division B)

In the 2020 season, I competed in Heredity, Fossils, Write It Do It, and Circuit Lab.

Event	Rustin	Garnet Valley	Regionals	States
Heredity	20th	3rd	3rd	WHY
Fossils	4th	4th	1st	WHY
Circuit Lab	14th	7th	7th	WHY
Write It Do It	15th	3rd	7th	WHY
Team	8th (?)	4th	1st	WHY

2020-2021 (9th Grade, Division C)

Event	SMEC	UT Austin	MIT	Solon	Duke	SOAPS	Princeton	SOUP	Regionals	States	Nationals
Designer Genes	-	-	41st 2	12th 2	8th	4th	14th	6th	2nd 3	1st	17th
Disease Detectives	1st	28th	-	16th	8th	12th	-	22nd	5th 3	3rd	4th
Protein Modeling	3rd	14th	32nd	9th	-	3rd	14th	13th	5th 3	1st	1st
Fossils	8th	24th	28th	17th	14th	-	-	-	-	-	-
WIDI	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	46th
Circuit Lab1	-	5th 1	60th 1	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
Anatomy (lol)	-	-	-	59th (lol) 1	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
Forensics	-	-	-	-	-	19th 1	-	-	-	-	-
Cell Biology	7th	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
Science Bowl	11th	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
Team	-	10th	41st	11th	8th	10th	6th	5th	1st	1st	13th
Superscore	-	8th	23rd	-	-	3rd	-	7th	-	-	-

¹ I was a warm body / filler.

² I had a warm body partner.

³ Look in the Summaries section for a rant!

2021-2022 (10th Grade, Division C)

	BirdSO Mini	Stoga	Solon	Cornell	Princeton	Bird Satellite	SOUP	Regionals	States
Cell Biology	13th4	c	9th4	17th4	29th2 4	27th	15th	2nd	3rd
Disease Detectives	-	a	6th	1st	13th	13th	11th	2nd	5th 2
Codebusters	-	n	11th	23rd4	19th	21st	14th	1st	2nd
WIDI/WICI	30th	c	18th	6th	-	3rd	-	-	-
Environmental Chem	68th4	e	20th	12th 4	25th2 4	27th	20th	2nd	6th 2
Forensics	33rd	l	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
Chem Lab	52nd	l	-	13th 4	20th	-	-	-	-
Cybersecurity	1st	e	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
Run it Code it	3rd	d	-	-	-	1st	-	-	-
Data Science	-	:(	-	-	-	2nd	-	-	-
Team	38th1	-	13th1	12th1	11th1	22nd	12th	2nd	4th
Superscore	11th	-	-	7th	7th	- 3	-	-	-

¹ Unstacked

² I blame the test more than myself

³ We'd have gotten around 10th - 15th had we not DQed two events :flushed:

⁴ Warm body partner

2022-2023 (11th Grade, Division C)

	Cornell	Stoga	SOAPS	SOUP	Princeton	Regionals	States
Cell Biology	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
Disease Detectives	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
Codebusters	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
Forensics	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
WIDI	-	-	-	-	-	-	-

Summaries

8th Grade (2019-2020)

My Events:

• Fossils: Hehe I was carried. Really carried. (although after regionals I started to actually study - I wish I had done it earlier)
• Heredity: This was probably the event that I spent the most time on - I was very excited to see how well I would do at states. I had a filler partner for regionals since my previous partner didn't make the team.
• Circuit Lab: Both me and my partner were horrible. We had a 60-page binder full of stuff that neither of us understood.
• WIDI: I was the doer and I was decent at it but my partner wasn't the best at writing. We were lucky to have IHateClouds coaching us and making us ridiculously-difficult WIDIs to practice with.

Rustin Invitational

This was my first competition ever for scioly, and it was super exciting! There were a couple of bombs - I had really hoped to place in Heredity, but unfortunately our score was worse than I had thought it would be due to a number of reasons (i.e. my partner being stupid, me being stupid for not checking his work, and weird test with some wrong answers in the answer key). My meh performance motivated me to study a lot before our next competition, Garnet Valley.

Team - 8th (announced as 5th at competition)

Garnet Valley Invitational

This was definitely my best performance at any competition in my 8th grade year. The most memorable moment at this competition was watching my friend compete in Mission Possible. He could have easily placed, but his clumsiness made him drop the golf ball so that it bounced off of the cup that it was supposed to go in, and then triggered the final action (which disqualified all of the previous actions because they're supposed to go in order). He wasn't even able to get points for the final action because, although it was triggered, the ball did not land on the tee. We were upset because of the bomb, but it was worth it for the laughs!

Team - 4th

Regionals (SEPA South)

After my high point at Garnet Valley, my placings at regionals were a bit of a disappointment (Garnet Valley is similar to states in terms of the competition, and my average at regionals was worse than my average at Garnet Valley). I have my excuses for why certain events didn't do so well, but in the end I knew that I had to study and practice more for states. Unfortunately, states was canceled due to COVID-19, so I never got to see how well I would have done. I was disappointed that my first chance to compete at states (and most likely last for one or two years, as I was moving up to a competitive high school) was ruined, but was glad that I could start prepping for high school early!

Team - 1st

9th Grade (2020-2021)

My Events:

• Designer Genes: My best event (or maybe not according to nats results?). Genetics is cool! I studied a lot for this event last summer but focused on my other events throughout the season since I needed to improve in them more.
• Fossils: Unlike last year, this year I'm actually capable at ID! I'm still not great at the event though, and navigating the binder online is super difficult for me.
• Disease Detectives: Although this is my first year competing in it, I did have some background in disease going into it because I studied for it last year before I realized that it conflicted with WIDI. It's a pretty fun event for me. I worked a lot on improving throughout the season, and my partner and I spent a lot of time reorganizing the cheat sheet between regionals and states. It's unfortunate that the nationals test was so easy; I feel that we didn't deserve our medal. However, I am proud that we managed to pick this event off the ground from one of LM's worst events to one that medalled at nats.
• Protein Modeling: I have no idea how, in a year, I went from literally not knowing anything about chemistry to getting first at nationals in this event. This was always the event that was the most fun for me. The first two tests I ever took were UT Austin and MIT (both written by the same pair of insane college students). These tests showed me how unpredictable protein modeling could be and how much critical thinking is involved. Even as I became more of a jmol person, I continued studying the theory. After realizing that I had no idea what I was doing on the regionals test, I grinded for states. My "protein" tab group in google chrome had upwards of 50 tabs of random biochemistry-related wikipedia articles, and I completed every single jmol section that our team had access to (this was rather unfortunate when nationals came around because I didn't have anything else to practice with D: ). I'm not really sure what transformed me and my partners to go from 13th at SOUP to 1st at states by >40 points. Despite the large point difference, I felt that our victory at states was kind of a fluke; I certainly didn't expect to medal at nationals, much less get first. But somehow it happened ! Me a couple months before nationals: This is a difficult event for me because I don't have much experience with chemistry. However, I study for it a lot and have learned a bunch! I mainly do protein structure questions, crispr, and jmol (but now I apparently have to learn about thermodynamics and enzyme kinetics because knowing about everything other than that is not good enough for my teammates) (update: now APOBEC as well :/)

UT Austin Invitational

My first ever Division C competition was super fun! Although I didn't get to compete in my favorite event (Designer Genes), I still had a really good time. Even though online competitions will never be the same as in person ones, I enjoyed taking my tests and watching the awards ceremony with my team. I placed around where I expected to for all of my events.

Team - 10th (unstacked, superscore 8th)

Solon Invitational

I was very disappointed with the quality of the Designer Genes test (only 100 easy multiple choice questions). Otherwise, tests ranged from decent to quite good. I liked how they tried to incorporate things like the protein prebuild. Also, it was nice to have awards and full results the next day.

Team - 9th (unstacked)

MIT Invitational

I was disappointed with my placements to say the least. I'll add more later, feeling a little lazy currently.

Team - 41st (unstacked, superscore 23rd)
fast forward 3 months because I was too lazy to do this for every competition

Regionals (SEPA)

Designer Genes: ridiculously easy test, very small margin between us and first place.

Disease Detectives: also ridiculously easy, we missed medalling by 0.009 points :/

Protein Modeling: it was not made clear that we were supposed to read papers; even looking back at the rules clarification document, I cannot find any links or mentions of the papers. At least half of the test was based on these papers, so we basically just BSed most of the test.

States (PA)

Designer Genes: The test was a lot more difficult than regionals, which was good. However, the main topics it tested are usually not emphasized in designer genes (lots of stuff about embryos/development and cancer).

Disease Detectives: Most of the test was stolen from the regionals test, which was pretty disappointing. The margin between top teams was very small.

Protein Modeling: While taking this test, it felt a lot like regionals. The jmol section was long and kept me busy for most of the test, and once I was done I helped to make up answers to some of the really random questions. I was very surprised when we won by over 40 points :o

Overall: ack I can't believe we got 1st!

Nationals

See here for my thoughts on how nationals was run!

10th Grade (2021-2022)

Why am I doing so many events >_<

I'm gonna die >_<

Let's try a change of format this year. I'll try writing about meaningful experiences in each event, rather than trying to cover every event at every competition.

Cell Biology

After medalling at BirdSO Mini, I thought I was set for the season. But clearly this was only because it was an early invite. Unfortunately, for a long time I was the only person at LM who did cell bio. It was a disaster. Halfway through invite season, my cheatsheet was still woefully incomplete and was missing vital information from the rules (eg. cell communication, microscopes, cellular basis of medicine, etc). Luckily, in mid February, my friend graciously volunteered to join the event. He took AP bio 2 years ago and has been very helpful with completing the cheatsheet :) Although only had a short amount of time to learn the event, we did pretty well, getting 2nd at regionals and 3rd at states. I loveeeeddd the regionals/states tests (well, not really, they were super stressful since they were in stations, but they were a proper difficulty unlike all my other tests so that's good). Fun fact: there were 5 points between us (3rd place) and 1st, and 29 points between us and 4th. I'm not too salty about the small gap though, it was a good test so the top 3 teams were just genuinely that close.

Codebusters

I got off to a slow start in code. It wasn't that enjoyable to me early in the season, since the online tests were pretty annoying. Also, I wasn't put on it at BirdSO Mini since we had a lot of new members who wanted to try it, so I didn't get to compete in it until after winter break. However, once the later invitationals came around, it slowly but surely became my favorite event- not just because of the event itself, but also my amazing partners. We became a bit of a cult (no, a ~family~), printing timed questions to practice every day, and at least one practice test a week. I came to love the adrenaline rush that came with solving aristocrats as quickly as possible. I also hated vigenère, but whatever :P Fun story: at states, we didn't get the timed question. It was an aristocrat with errors, but my partner didn't realize that it had errors so she freaked out. We became more and more crushed as more and more teams called out their team numbers throughout the first 10 minutes. Throughout the rest of the test, all of us were frazzled. Our morale was crushed. We surely couldn't place better than 5th without the 1000+ points that we missed out on. However, during the awards ceremony, we were very surprised to learn that we had gotten 2nd place!!! Apparently all that practice paid off~ even if it didn't for the timed question.

Disease Detectives

This was kind of a sad event for me this year. After a while, disease just gets tiresome because it's the same questions over and over, with very little variation between tests. It was even more sad at regionals and states, since the tests were bad (lots of trivia about history/people that literally no one cares about, and too easy). Regardless, it was still one of my better events (other than regs/states) in terms of placing, so I guess that's cool. Also I love my partner <3

Environmental Chemistry

lol. Anyways, I actually liked the tests at regs/states (i.e. there was no orgo) except they were too short. Everyone knows that this event is objectively bad lol. But still, I really enjoyed some parts of it. Copy-pasting information about random pollutants into a google doc was actually surprisingly fun (I'm not being sarcastic)! And the math was sometimes fun. Mostly not though... solon was especially bad. Anyways, I love my partner for this one too <3 we'll get first at every comp next year @eddpmett :triumph:

I'll finish this later :D

Test Writing

Tournament	Date	Role	Link	Notes
SSSS	2020	Heredity Writer	Test Key	Pretty pleased with this test. Slightly trivia-heavy.
SSSS	2020	Fossils Writer	Test Key	Could have included more about how specimens interacted with each other and more isotope stuff.
Rustin Invitational	2020	Home Horticulture Writer		Not gonna lie, pretty bad test.
Captain's Summer Exchange	2022	Environmental Chemistry Writer	Test Key	Too short, but not bad.
Dick Smith Memorial Invitational	December 3 2022	Disease Detectives Division B Writer
Rustin Invitational	December 17 2022	Disease Detectives Division B Writer
Pitt Invitational	January 21 2023	Bio-Process Lab Division B Writer

Random Stuff About Me

My username: Honestly I wasn't thinking when I thought of it... on a science olympiad website, it probably isn't the best idea to "ew" a branch of science that many people love. Please note that I do not hate physics, I just prefer other branches of science.

I was pleased to contribute for the 2020 Pseudonats! I helped to write tests for the events Punnett Square Dancing and Octogenarians.

Besides SciOly, I like to play piano and study random biology stuff. I'm also on my school's debate team (I do Public Forum) and do both school swimming and club swimming. In what little free time I have, I enjoy programming in Python. Check out my github here!

On the Science Olympiad discords, I often go by the name "Liz" (see here for a short explanation). I've also been called "biobrat", "petri dish", "EwwLizzy"/"EwwLizzics", and "lizzo."

Favorite Quotes

“It is time for the human race to enter the solar system!”
-Dan Quayle

“It isn’t pollution that is harming the environment. It’s the impurities in the air and water that are doing it.”
-Dan Quayle

“Space is almost infinite. In fact, we think it is infinite!”
-Dan Quayle

“If you give a man a fish, he’ll fish for a day. But if you train a man to fish, he’ll fish for a lifetime.”
-Dan Quayle

“One word sums up the responsibility of any Vice President, and that one word is “to be prepared””
-Dan Quayle

Credits: Pepperonipi for some userboxes and Sciolyperson1 because I was too lazy to make my results chart without copy/pasting the code.