The 2012 Lab-o-Lympics Challenge
Inspired by the awesomeness of 2011 - this year the Wright and Heffernan labs joined the fun. We began at high noon in the middle of the Duke Forest.
Front Row (L-R) Ben Colman, Anna Braswell, Kris Voss, Jim Heffernan, Megan Fork, Raven Bier, Tim Covino
Standing (L-R) Jai Singh, Ashley Helton, Matt Ross, Alison Appling, Justin Wright, Steve Anderson (up high), Greg Ames (sort of high), Marissa Lee, Erin Seybold, Bob Shriver, Anna Fedders, Brooke Hassett, Meredith Steele, Emily Bernhardt
Standing (L-R) Jai Singh, Ashley Helton, Matt Ross, Alison Appling, Justin Wright, Steve Anderson (up high), Greg Ames (sort of high), Marissa Lee, Erin Seybold, Bob Shriver, Anna Fedders, Brooke Hassett, Meredith Steele, Emily Bernhardt
INDIVIDUAL STANDINGS - EVENT 1
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Event 1 - The Awkward Field Equipment CarryIn this event, designed by the Bernhardt lab, individuals from each lab competed in heats to see who could carry the maximum possible load of field equipment roughly 400m through the woods. This was an event requiring strategy as well as brawn.
Our scoring system was inordinately complicated. Each contestant raced against 2 other people in their heat. At the gun, they had to change into field footwear, grab supplies, and then find a way to carry a raw egg together with the materials.
Footwear: Knee boots (5pts), hip waders (10pts), chest waders (20pts) +5pts for not fastening suspenders Supplies:
Speed: +5opts to fastest person in each heat Route difficulty: 1X for traveling on road 2X total for traveling off road Egg safety (very loosely approximating protecting a sensitive and expensive instrument): -100pts for breaking your egg |
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Event 2 - Ecological Concept Charades (with candy)In this event, designed by the Heffernan lab, lab teams split in two with each sub-team drawing an ecological concept at random from a collection of slips in Anna's hand.
Each subteam than had 10 minutes to prepare a conceptual model of their concept using toothpicks, gummy bears, gummy frogs, gummy chicken feet, gummy eggs and swedish fish. At the end of the sculpting period each team had to use their model in a charade in which they tried to get the other members of their lab to guess the concept. Pleased to report that every team successfully guessed the appropriate concept. As you can see the quality of the models (and their utility) was highly variable. |
Event # 3 - Sampling & Processing ChallengeIn this event, devised by the Wright lab, each contestant had to run through the woods to a marked plot with a slide hammer and corer, collect a soil core, return to the start and remove the core, sieve it and weight out a 100g soil sample (within 1g). They then had to collect a 300g sample of leaf litter from the same plot and weigh it to within a gram of the goal [which was super annoying because the scale they brought only went to 145g].
INDIVIDUAL STANDINGS - EVENT 3
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Final Event - Taking tests for fun
Because we are morally opposed to down time, each lab prepared some fun silent challenges.
1. Aquatic macroinvertebrate identification quiz - answer questions about 8 preserved specimens
2. Guess the % carbon of a soil sample
3. Guess the # and total area of lakes in a remote sensing delineated map of an unknown city (bonus for guessing the city)
4. Identify 6 NC tree species from their leaves
5. Guess the % cover of cardboard shapes within 4 quadrats of varying sizes
6. Estimate the basal area of trees in a 100m2 plot in the forest
1. Aquatic macroinvertebrate identification quiz - answer questions about 8 preserved specimens
2. Guess the % carbon of a soil sample
3. Guess the # and total area of lakes in a remote sensing delineated map of an unknown city (bonus for guessing the city)
4. Identify 6 NC tree species from their leaves
5. Guess the % cover of cardboard shapes within 4 quadrats of varying sizes
6. Estimate the basal area of trees in a 100m2 plot in the forest
INDIVIDUAL STANDINGS - SILENT EVENT
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Final Combined Individual Scores
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