Science Bowl--NAQT style?

bleung · Post by **bleung** » Thu Jul 27, 2006 2:34 pm

Players and Coaches --

NAQT is preparing a bid to supply the U.S. Department of Energy with
questions for its Science Bowl for the coming academic year. We would
like to include testimonials from teams familiar with both NAQT and
Science Bowl indicating that they believe we would do a good,
great--or even fantastic!--job writing science questions for them.

If you would be willing to provide such a statement (one line, one
paragraph, we're not picky), please contact us at naqt-at-naqt.com.

We hope to hear from many of you!

-- R. Robert Hentzel
President and Chief Technical Officer,
National Academic Quiz Tournaments, LLC

Does anyone here know if DOE ever accepted the offer? Being a member of my school's Science Bowl team, I'm pretty curious.

DZ_LAMP · Post by **DZ_LAMP** » Thu Jul 27, 2006 5:57 pm

I dont know if DOE ever accepted the offer, but it would be so awesome and a blessing if NAQT wrote the questions. Not only do i hate Science Bowl's ambiguous and confusing questions, but having NAQT write the questions might resolve the problem of correct yet "inaccurate" answers like vulcanization instead of vulcanization of natural rubbers, which is redundant and unnecessary.

solonqb · Post by **solonqb** » Thu Jul 27, 2006 6:54 pm

NAQT will not be writing questions for Science Bowl this year; they will however be in the pool for bidding next year.

DZ_LAMP · Post by **DZ_LAMP** » Thu Jul 27, 2006 7:52 pm

Grrrrrrrrrrrr

STPickrell · Post by **STPickrell** » Fri Jul 28, 2006 12:20 pm

Anyone remember what happened the year Bryce oversaw the questions?

I will email him when I get back and ask him to post about his experience.

bdavery · Post by **bdavery** » Sat Jul 29, 2006 2:08 pm

I'll save Shawn the e-mail.

The problem is not who writes the questions, as I thought. The problem is that DOE is the final arbiter. After even the world's best porterhouse steak goes through the DOE meatgrinder, you're left with horse meat.

rajudragon · Post by **rajudragon** » Wed Aug 09, 2006 10:35 am

Their questions are really quick and are all buzzer beaters especially in the earlier rounds. However in the final rounds they do get relatively hard, with the final scores usually below 50. And their math questions are nearly impossible to solve within 5 seconds. Hopefully they will change something this year.