If you have been following my blog and was expecting this explorace to be similar to the Chemistry Explorace a few weeks ago, I can assure you that you're only 5% right. You're 5% right because there were one or two checkpoints that were similar to the checkpoints in the chemistry explorace. You're also (only) 5% right because it was a whole lot different.
On my way to the Management & Science University which was the venue, I was trying to recall what my teacher had said during the briefing in school a week ago. So, it was supposed to be more challenging than the chemistry explorace as this time, we were supposed to really race each other to complete the challenges in the shortest amount of time possible.
As soon as my 3 other friends and I confirmed our registrations for the explorace, we were divided into random groups. This is the part I loved the most during the chemistry explorace because I got a chance to know new people. This time, I met a whole new bunch of people too (actually just 4).
Well, this time, it was a little different. As soon as I found my group members, we kinda like clicked together pretty fast. It was all thanks to the girl from Methodist Girls School. She was quite the talkative type and to be frank, she initiated all the conversations at the beginning of our unofficial ice-breaking session.
Ok, let's get to the real deal. We started off from the lecture hall after a short briefing. It's been a few weeks ago since the competition so I can't really remember exactly what happened. The first experiment was to test the relationship between the length of the ohmic conductor and the resistance of the circuit. This experiment is one of the most uncertain experiments because malfunctioning ammeters and voltmeters are very common. Fortunately for my team, all the equipments were working well.
Other than that, in one of the checkpoints, there were 2 experiments to complete on properties of light. The first one was to test that light moved in a straight line. That was simple. The next one was to make a smaller beaker look invisible in a bigger beaker. It took us some time to interpret the instructions carefully before managing to complete the experiment. Basically, we had to place the small beaker inside the big beaker and pour oil into the small beaker until it appeared invisible.
In one other checkpoint, there were also 2 experiments to complete. Well, this checkpoint was the most challenging one as we faced a hard time to provide an explanation to the experiment we conducted. The worst part was the application question based on the experiment. (For every experiment, we had to provide an explanation and application in daily life except for the ohmic conductor experiment).
The first experiment was to trap a boiled egg in a conical flask. Basically, we were supposed to put the egg into the conical flask which had an opening which was too small for the egg to pass through. One of my group members then came up with a wonderful idea. He burned a piece of paper and chucked it into the conical flask while it was burning. Then, immediately he placed the egg at the mouth of the conical flask. After a few tries, we managed to slot the egg through the opening due to the reduced pressure inside the conical flask as a result of decreased volume of oxygen from combustion.
For the second part, we had to bend 5 matchsticks and place them in such a way that the bent parts of all the matchsticks were touching each other to form a star. Then, we were instructed to drop a few drops of water at the centre and observe. As the water droplet hit the centre, the matchsticks first came close together and then moved further away. We were staring blankly at each other for an explanation to the beautiful phenomena we just experienced. After the time was up, we found out that it had something to do with capillary action that we learnt in Biology (We could not figure it out because we were thinking too deep on Physics).
Well, that was all the experiments we did. In other checkpoints we had a quiz, a crossword puzzle (actually a few), a memory test ( we failed badly at remembering the names of Filipino scientist that we had to memorise in 5 minutes) and a spontaneous quiz. In the spontaneous quiz, we had to answer 10 questions, one by one, and we got a chance to throw 2 ping pong balls into a beaker from a distance for each correct answer. We managed to answer 9 out of 10 but never got a ball into the beaker.
We finally completed the race and settled down in the lecture hall to wait for the others and to know the results of the race. Again, the unexpected struck the team which had a whole lot of fun and never really mentioned anything about winning-my team!
Yeah, my team won the explorace...and it was my second explorace victory after winning the chemistry explorace. I was quite surprised to have won. Then, it was deja vu again when my school was announced the overall winner for the explorace after marks were accumulated based on the performance of the 4 of us representing my school.
It was another amazing day I have to say. A wonderful experience with different types of experiments, mind boggling quizzes and memory tests, various situations that required analytical thinking and to top it all off.....2 winners medals. A great day indeed......but more importantly, the experience was extraordinary........
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