Academic Team Semifinals

Fun with the Manatee County Academic Team in Orlando! We made it to the semifinals, and came thisclose to being in the final top six of the 39 Florida teams represented. 

"Warming up" for our match

In numbers, while we spent three days visiting three theme parks, the number of questions encountered is much more impressive. Even with free theme park passes, the boys chose to spend almost eight hours reviewing five sets of questions, about 385 in total. 

Practice was actually pretty fun...better than the Reading Room for sure.

During their three rounds, they faced 195 individual and 90 team questions. Five of the boys buzzed in to earn the team positive points. Even more impressive, we earned 30 of 30 points for the final team sheet in the second round. Good luck to them the rest of senior year and in college. I'm confident they'll all be successful.

Cleaned up for the awards banquet

Academic Team Press

Front page of the local newspaper, the Bradenton Herald! 

I'm proud of these boys. They've worked hard in all their classes, and they've earned the right to represent Manatee County at the state competition. We head to Orlando next Thursday.

http://www.bradenton.com/2013/04/10/4475630/manatee-county-students-prepare.html

My thoughts on differences in print and digital copies of the paper. 
Digital copies are easier to share. More photos can be included in the digital gallery, and they've gotten some excellent photos. (You can see each boy's "thinking face.") 
However, there's a mysterious something about being one of the few stories above the fold on a print edition. Limited space makes the focus seem like a more valuable commodity. 
 
Thoughts?

Academic Team Win

The Saint Stephen's Academic Team came in first place at the Academic Team competition last night! They competed against 15 other Manatee County high school teams, and we're so proud of the students' performance. Here are some of the questions that the students answered correctly.

Identify respectively the verbal phrases in the following four sentences as gerund, participle, or infinitive. 1. To carry on was her goal. 2. Carrying on was what she had been taught. 3. The people carrying on the most were in trouble. 4. They should have known better than to carry on.

Which one of the following four statements is possible concerning the movement of an electron from the fourth major energy level to the second. 1. It would absorb energy in the form of ultraviolet lig.ht. 2. It would emit energy in the form of ultraviolet light. 3. It would absorb energy in the form of visible light. 4. It would emit energy in the form of visible light.

From the following descriptions, identify respectively the four people associated with Julius Caesar. 1. son-in-law and fellow triumvir of Julius 2. daughter of Caesar and Cornelia 3. uncle of Caesar who fought on the side of the assembly in the first Civil War 4. grand-nephew and heir of Julius Caesar.

And here's one of the questions that no team even attempted to answer. (They lose points if they guess incorrectly.)

To two significant digits calculate respectively in hertz the first three harmonics of a 1.0-meter long pipe that is closed at one end.

If you see members of the Academic Team around school, congratulate them on a great meet. It also goes to show that even in a digital age where facts are easily available, there's value to quick knowledge retrieval.