Experimental Design B/C

[gandhiji]

i got 1st place in the B division for this event, and i really dont know how.

[zyzzyva98]

It's quite honestly nuts that they would use nuts in this event.

That's putting some teams at an unfair advantage over teams with people with allergies. And while it sounds like a cool experiment, making the experiment fun should come second to safety.

[tclme elmo]

We wound up getting 17th, which is fine, but I have to say that that test was not good. They gave us a jar of iodine and 5 snack foods, and we watched the snack foods change color. On paper this sounds ok, but it was not. They gave us peanuts as a snack food, and one person who had an allergy was forced to leave. I just don't understand how nuts could be used ever in this event,especially at nationals.

It was one of our Fulton Science students who had to leave. We coaches and parents were livid when we found out. His parents take so many precautions to keep him safe and then the one place that you wouldn't think would be a danger he is confronted with peanuts. He had to go into another room while our other 2 students did the experiment, then they were sent into the room he was in to do the write up, never mind that they still could have had peanut residue on their clothes... incredibly, amazing stupid, thoughtless, careless and dangerous. And no mention by the event supervisor that they would be using nuts at the coaches meeting the night before.

It was a horrible decision on their part, having peanuts in an experiment should not even be THOUGHT of. There is bound to be SOMEONE who is allergic.
I also heard that this student was the one who was in charge of the observations, which did not help. The experiment was VERY unfair. I don't believe an arbitrary was made?
I felt horrible.

[rfscoach]

We wound up getting 17th, which is fine, but I have to say that that test was not good. They gave us a jar of iodine and 5 snack foods, and we watched the snack foods change color. On paper this sounds ok, but it was not. They gave us peanuts as a snack food, and one person who had an allergy was forced to leave. I just don't understand how nuts could be used ever in this event,especially at nationals.

It was one of our Fulton Science students who had to leave. We coaches and parents were livid when we found out. His parents take so many precautions to keep him safe and then the one place that you wouldn't think would be a danger he is confronted with peanuts. He had to go into another room while our other 2 students did the experiment, then they were sent into the room he was in to do the write up, never mind that they still could have had peanut residue on their clothes... incredibly, amazing stupid, thoughtless, careless and dangerous. And no mention by the event supervisor that they would be using nuts at the coaches meeting the night before.

It was a horrible decision on their part, having peanuts in an experiment should not even be THOUGHT of. There is bound to be SOMEONE who is allergic.
I also heard that this student was the one who was in charge of the observations, which did not help. The experiment was VERY unfair. I don't believe an arbitrary was made?
I felt horrible.

Ya, I don't believe the complaint ever got filed. It totally got lost in the shuffle especially since shortly after that one of our other students broke his arm and needed emergency care and we had to find replacements for his events....

[tclme elmo]

It was one of our Fulton Science students who had to leave. We coaches and parents were livid when we found out. His parents take so many precautions to keep him safe and then the one place that you wouldn't think would be a danger he is confronted with peanuts. He had to go into another room while our other 2 students did the experiment, then they were sent into the room he was in to do the write up, never mind that they still could have had peanut residue on their clothes... incredibly, amazing stupid, thoughtless, careless and dangerous. And no mention by the event supervisor that they would be using nuts at the coaches meeting the night before.

It was a horrible decision on their part, having peanuts in an experiment should not even be THOUGHT of. There is bound to be SOMEONE who is allergic.
I also heard that this student was the one who was in charge of the observations, which did not help. The experiment was VERY unfair. I don't believe an arbitrary was made?
I felt horrible.

Ya, I don't believe the complaint ever got filed. It totally got lost in the shuffle especially since shortly after that one of our other students broke his arm and needed emergency care and we had to find replacements for his events....

Ouch! That stinks! I'm so sorry!

[zyzzyva98]

That's just bad luck. Some things you just can't control. Better luck next year.

[bubblebrian]

We wound up getting 17th, which is fine, but I have to say that that test was not good. They gave us a jar of iodine and 5 snack foods, and we watched the snack foods change color. On paper this sounds ok, but it was not. They gave us peanuts as a snack food, and one person who had an allergy was forced to leave. I just don't understand how nuts could be used ever in this event,especially at nationals.

oh I got 18th, just behind you

[lllazar]

Wow, nuts? This wasn't a regional competition, it's the national tournament...and don't they have coach meetings the day before to see how all the events are being run?

Either way, that's completely preposterous, those supervisors should be ashamed...those kids practice so much for this and look forward to competing at nats...seriously, how can they make a mistake like this...nut allergies aren't exactly 1 in a million, and im pretty sure they plan events weeks or even months in advance...they had plenty of time to work out the kinks.

[Phenylethylamine]

Wow, nuts? This wasn't a regional competition, it's the national tournament...and don't they have coach meetings the day before to see how all the events are being run?

Either way, that's completely preposterous, those supervisors should be ashamed...those kids practice so much for this and look forward to competing at nats...seriously, how can they make a mistake like this...nut allergies aren't exactly 1 in a million, and im pretty sure they plan events weeks or even months in advance...they had plenty of time to work out the kinks.

Last year's B Division Experimental event was poorly run, too, but not on anywhere near so dangerous a scale (although I heard that last year's big issue- that is, shortage of paper- was repeated this year, as well).

[zyzzyva98]

Shortage of paper? This is a national tournament! There are scholarships on the line! These events MUST be better run.

[bubblebrian]

Shortage of paper? This is a national tournament! There are scholarships on the line! These events MUST be better run.

Do you really care about the scholarships that much?

[zyzzyva98]

I wasn't there, I can't say. But I will say that the scholarships are worth money, and if you were giving away money, you'd want to make sure it was distributed fairly.

[eyeball138]

The problem wasn't that paper wasn't distributed evenly to teams...it was that there was not enough room in the designated spots on the paper that they gave us. Even then, that wasn't too big of a problem, because the back could be used. The bigger problem was that there were multiple things on the same piece of paper, so that you pretty much had to do one thing on each specific paper at a time.

[Phenylethylamine]

The problem wasn't that paper wasn't distributed evenly to teams...it was that there was not enough room in the designated spots on the paper that they gave us. Even then, that wasn't too big of a problem, because the back could be used. The bigger problem was that there were multiple things on the same piece of paper, so that you pretty much had to do one thing on each specific paper at a time.

Last year they told us that the back could be used, but only reluctantly after saying about twelve times, "Well, just try to fit it in the space, okay?" In the end we have no idea if they ever read the backs of our papers, despite the fact that we clearly marked that our answers were continued on the back.

[tclme elmo]

Another thing was that they didn't provide us with graph paper. What they gave us was the bottom...probably 3 inches of the sheet for the graph. I had never done any tests without graph paper, and especially with this little space. At least it was a bar graph.