Project 1 -- Math-Science Field Day at SCC

 

 

On January 11th of this year, Scottsdale Community College had their annual Math-Science Field Day.  Students from approximately ten high schools in the metro Phoenix area took time off from their regular schooling to come and compete in several scientific disciplines.  Activities included a math exam, a science quiz, a design project (rolling a coffee can up an incline using only a weight and rubber bands), and the final event, the team quizbowl event.

 

Quizbowl is a game similar to the GE College Bowl that ran on radio and television from the 1950's to the 1980's, and it is currently played by hundreds of high schools and universities across the country.  (Usually two) teams of (usually) four players listen to a moderator describe a certain person or thing, with the clues starting very obscure and gradually becoming easier (e.g. a question may begin with something about Mount Vernon and gradually get to "Name this first U.S. president").  In this sense, a player with a deeper knowledge of a subject is rewarded for that, unlike exams, where people either know or don't know a certain answer.  A well-written quizbowl round will consist of answers that nearly everyone knows, thereby separating those with more knowledge of the subject at hand from those with only a cursory feel.

 

During a question at the SCC event, teams who felt they knew the answer would press a button, at which point their team's magnet would drop down an incline -- the team whose magnet reached the bottom first would be given the first chance to answer the question.  Teams were allowed one attempt per question, and were allowed to confer during the question.  A maximum of four clues were heard for each question, and these clues were both read aloud and displayed on a Powerpoint overhead.  About ten seconds of thinking time was between each clue.  The questions were from each of four categories: math, physics, chemistry, and biology.  Three teams of four students each participated, and the team accumulating the most points over the 16-question round was declared the winner.

 

My contribution to this event was supplying the questions for the three science categories.  For the past four years, I have been a participant on ASU's quizbowl squad, and writing questions is the best way for a player to learn more about a subject.  This required me to think of an answer that most high school students would know, and then to find facts (both obscure and apparent) about said answer.  I e-mailed my questions and answers to Dr. Doug Sawyer of SCC, who pasted everything into the aforementioned Powerpoint presentation.

 

Would you like to see how you would have done?  The following link will take you to the questions that I wrote.  To play along, gradually scroll down, revealing only one clue at a time for each of the questions.  If you feel like you know what's being described, take a guess.  As a warning, some of these questions went very quickly to some motivated high school students!

 

To visit the official SCC Math-Science Field Day site, click here:

http://www.sc.maricopa.edu/events/math/index.html

 

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