Science Olympiad: National Tournament

Wednesday, and I was checked out five minutes before the final bell. To go to nationals. Me and two other students carpooled to the airport, where we began to fly to nationals. The first flight was to Milwaukee and we passed the time by talking. The second was to Madison, and we played cards to keep ourselves busy. When we arrived, we unpacked in the dorms and hit the hay (at 10:30.) Thursday morning came nice and early at 7:00 or so, though it felt more like 6:00 because of the time difference. After eating in the dorms for breakfast, we went to workshops such as The Wonders of Physics (a demonstration of basic laws of physics,) Physics Museum Tour (where there were all kinds of neat things like tesla coils, spinning platforms, pendulums, etc.) We also watched part of We Are What We Remember, which was a lecture by a bunch of nobel prize scientists, but we were tired of trying to understand the nobel biologist language, and we left halfway through. Following the lecture, we decided to try icecream which we thought would be good (since we were in Wisconsin) and we went and got some. I had "Union Utopia." Well, lets just say I have a new favorite icecream. Just multiply the tastiness of your favorite icecream by 10, and you pretty much have union utopia.  After that, we ate and walked with the whole team to Lake Menona, where we went on a dinner cruise on a small boat for two hours. The food was alright, but sailing was great fun, and it was pretty cool to see the city from the water. When we returned, most of the students (including myself) got together and played cards and plenty of other games. Then we went to bed at 10 or 11 o'clock. On Friday, we actually were able to sleep in until about 8:00. From when I ate breakfast to about 1:00, I built my bottle rocket in the dorms. After that we went to the Brats and Cheese fest, where they had amazing food including hamburgers, brats, home made rootbeer, assorted cheese, cookies, and more. The cheese was amazing, and so was the rootbeer. Following the amazing dinner by Lake Mendota, we went to the opening ceremonies. They were so amazing! I can hardly explain it. Each team got to have some kids represent it in the parade of states. I got to be one of the people, and we walked around with a banner, the Fairfield flag, and the Utah flag. That was cool. Other amazing parts were chemistry demos, a more amazing version of The Wonders of Physics, the astounding school band, and indoor fireworks and pyrotechnics. After the opening ceremony, we went to the swap meet, where I got a lot of cool stuff like frisbees and T-Shirts. Then we went back to the dorms and to bed. Then Saturday came. The day I had been training for for basically the entire school year. It was finally time to compete. My first event of the day was building the Junkyard Challenge Project, which was a catapult. We made a really good one, and we walked away hoping for a medal. Then we went to Towers. Towers was definitely the most cool. They had it in a very small auditorium. There were between 25 and 50 people watching consistently most of the time. They played sci-fi type music, and played tower breaks in slow motion. My tower basically held the whole weight, and I got a score of about 32. Later we went back to Junkyard, but I will get to that in a minute. In bottle rockets, I got an 18 second rocket time. We did pretty well in Optics, and I thought we did OK in Write it Do it, though it was the most nightmarish model ever. About Junkyard Challenge, we were disqualified 4 different times. First for box size, but we were requalified after a new measurement, then for an incorrect trigger, which I showed actually worked, then it was tape, which we stopped as well. But in the end, they accused us of not having glasses (which we definitely had.) The team next to us even told them we had them, and we filed an appeal. But, they denied it and we were dropped to second tier (behind all of the qualifying people.) When the awards came, I found out my scores. 9th in Towers, 16th in Bottle Rocket, 17th in Optics, 21st in Write it Do it, and 30th in Junkyard Challenge (which means we almost definitely medaled unless more than half of the people were disqualified. It was a great day, and a very successful one. Overall, nationals was a great experience, and I have a feeling it will be on my mind for a long time.