National Science Bowl
Awesome trip. We skipped the night tour of the monuments on Thursday, then visited Washington tourist attractions (Air and Space Museum, then Natural History, then National Archives) on Friday. Saturday was a day of lectures. First, we listened to an arrogant prosthetics guy talk about his work. Then, we had a choice of lectures; we chose to watch Mr. Magnet. While what he did was interesting, I felt that it was -- for the most part -- too showy and not enough real science. He did demonstrate the Meissner effect, as well as show off a Van der graff generator and a few other things. Francois, Barry, and I attended a supernova lecture after lunch, while Ylaine and Galen went to a BioBriefcase lecture. I especially enjoyed the supernova lecture; it wasn't difficult to understand, but there was still quite a bit of new stuff that I learned.
Sunday was the first day of competition. We were 7-0 in our division, taking top seed. After two rounds of single-elimination playoffs that night, we were slated to play Thomas Jefferson (defending champions for the last four consecutive years) Monday morning. All the nerves and the excitement led to team sing-alongs on the competition bench, and Barry pouring a pitcher of water down his uniform right before the match. Fortunately, we blazed off to a great start, and TJ never led that round.
Eventually, we ended up on top in the finals, coming back from a 18-52 deficit at the half to defeat North Hollywood 98-60.
Francois also bled three or four times, each time getting more blood on his assorted clothing... whether it was a nosebleed, or catching a frisbee wrong. Also, on the way home, Barry bounced around few ideas about relativistic physics, some of them pretty bizarre, only to have a physicist with a Ph.D. in relativity eavesdropping and giving us a lecture.... in the Philadelphia airport terminal. He ended up giving us a reading list and his contact information. Oh, yeah, he was from TJ, too.
A few more pictures will come later, I think.
Sunday was the first day of competition. We were 7-0 in our division, taking top seed. After two rounds of single-elimination playoffs that night, we were slated to play Thomas Jefferson (defending champions for the last four consecutive years) Monday morning. All the nerves and the excitement led to team sing-alongs on the competition bench, and Barry pouring a pitcher of water down his uniform right before the match. Fortunately, we blazed off to a great start, and TJ never led that round.
Eventually, we ended up on top in the finals, coming back from a 18-52 deficit at the half to defeat North Hollywood 98-60.
Francois also bled three or four times, each time getting more blood on his assorted clothing... whether it was a nosebleed, or catching a frisbee wrong. Also, on the way home, Barry bounced around few ideas about relativistic physics, some of them pretty bizarre, only to have a physicist with a Ph.D. in relativity eavesdropping and giving us a lecture.... in the Philadelphia airport terminal. He ended up giving us a reading list and his contact information. Oh, yeah, he was from TJ, too.
A few more pictures will come later, I think.