yesterday was the preliminary round of SPARKS, which im joining for the second time. the first time i joined, which was last year, it sort of scared me off. the preliminary mcq round was extremely hard (at least it felt really difficult with our then-sec 4 science knowledge), while the hands-on finals ironically required little to no knowledge of science and more or less boiled down to a luck. i actually wasnt planning on joining again this year, but lishang and brenda dragged me into it. this year's preliminary round now has an mcq section as well as a hands-on section. the mcq is now even harder than last year's, testing such topics as relativity and quantum physics. the hands-on round this time was to build a tower out of uncooked spaghetti and marshmallows which could withstand being tilted without toppling over. the design we came up with was so crazy that i just had to take a photo of it:
yes, it is leaning to one side, and yes, it is meant to do that. we were acting like complete jokers during the entire event XD well anyway, we managed to get into the finals, and we're the only ignis team to make it in for both JH and SH levels, despite tying with solaris for having the most teams in both JH and SH categories. lionel and i were joking that this is a sign that the average intelligence of our house is falling lol
tmr is the first H3 physics test, which will be 7.5% of my final grade. i really hope i dont screw up as spectacularly as the H3 math test, otherwise i really wouldnt know what im doing in any H3 anymore.
edit @ 10.09pm: loled when i saw this tutorial question while studying for H3 physics. i swear that this is an actual question from the tutorial. i know it's supposed to be biophysics, but this looks nothing like biology or physics:
Aliens are invading the earth. From a captured specimen we (the human beings) find out that the aliens have brain neurons which on average have a diameter ten times that of ours, whereas most of the neurons to their muscles are much thinner than ours. One day you meet an unarmed alien on the road. What do you do: Stay to fight or run away?i think im better off watching sci-fi movies rather than studying for H3 physics :D
Answer: The velocity of neuron signals increases proportionally with radius of the neurons. From the size of their neurons, you can conclude that the aliens think very fast, but move very slowly. However you don’t know anything about how strong they are and how much pain they can endure. Moreover, they may be so smart that they fool you if you come close. So the safest thing would be to run away (you can surely do this since muscle-neurons are much thinner than yours) until you gain more knowledge about strength and pain endurance.
edit @ 10.44pm: remembering something that xiaolan said yesterday, i decided to search google and see if i can find past-year H3 physics papers. instead, i found a bunch of blogs of people who took H3 physics in previous years. i skimmed through 3 of them. the first guy was from HCI, and apparently he was struggling through lectures just like i am now. the second guy, also from HCI, took 2 H3s, the same 2 which i am taking now, but he took 3 H2s and 1 H1. the third was offered a chance to take 2 H3s, but he also had to drop a H2 subject to H1. im not saying that i combed through every single google search result, but i think it can be concluded that im venturing through quite an uncharted territory here, and frankly speaking it terrifies me; it terrifies me that the path im taking has so few footprints before me, and that the number of people who can truly relate to my situation probably amount to less than a hundred. not only that, the first 2 blogs were about guys who were (i dont mean to sound evil, but...) kind of like your stereotypical nerds, and none of them were slackers who spent all their time with hockey and heavy metal and took 2 H3s together with 4 H2s. if there exists a certain type of person who's destined to excel in H3s, it sure as hell doesnt sound like im that type of person.
