2011 Lab Pentathlon --
What better way to celebrate the holidays than a rousing afternoon of lab and field skill competition....
December 19, 2011.
Event #1 - The field obstacle course
Matt takes an early lead
Working in pairs, teams had to 1. acquire a single pair of waders to share; 2. run down a trail to a stream and locate a marine deep cycle battery; 3. deposit a sampling kit at the battery location and draw a field map to relocate the sampling equipment; 4. carry the marine battery up the trail and back to the starting line; 5. trade waders so that team member 2 could put them on and run down the trail with the map to locate the sampling kit; 6. Once the sampling kit was located, competitors had to set up their syringe tip filter with a GFF filter and collect and filter a 250mL sample using a 25mL syringe; 7. samples were returned to the starting position. Samples that had particulate material or air bubbles were disqualified.
1st place tie: Best Time - Brooke Hassett and Kayleigh Somers, No air bubble - Kris Voss and Matt Ross
2nd place: Ben Colman and Anna Fedders
3rd place: Raven Bier and Alison Appling
this event designed by Brian Lutz, Ashley Helton and Emily Bernhardt during a very long car trip....
1st place tie: Best Time - Brooke Hassett and Kayleigh Somers, No air bubble - Kris Voss and Matt Ross
2nd place: Ben Colman and Anna Fedders
3rd place: Raven Bier and Alison Appling
this event designed by Brian Lutz, Ashley Helton and Emily Bernhardt during a very long car trip....
Event #2 - Speed decrimping
In this individual event, lab members competed to see who could decrimp the most used gas vials in 1 minute.
Newcomers to the sport(?) Brian Lutz and Matt Ross surprised us all with their mad decrimping skills
1st place - Brian Lutz - 21 vials
2nd place - Matt Ross - 20 vials
3rd place - Raven Bier, Ben Colman and Emily Bernhardt - 19 vials
Newcomers to the sport(?) Brian Lutz and Matt Ross surprised us all with their mad decrimping skills
1st place - Brian Lutz - 21 vials
2nd place - Matt Ross - 20 vials
3rd place - Raven Bier, Ben Colman and Emily Bernhardt - 19 vials
Event #3 - 3-D Conceptual Model Sculpting
Our lab loves a good conceptual model, but usually we use Power Point to build our cartoons. For a 3-D twist, teams of 3 vied to produce the best diorama to depict the effect of mountaintop mining on 3 make believe worlds - Whoville (the Grinch who Stole Christmas), Wonderland (as in Alice in) and Candyland (the game). Each team had 8 tubs of play-doh and 15 minutes. Here are the results....
These were all so creative that our judges declared a 3 way tie for first place
These were all so creative that our judges declared a 3 way tie for first place
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Event #4 - Long distance filtration
In an event that all agreed was the most difficult, pairs of contestants attempted to shoot streamwater from a 60mL plastic syringe across a 5-m boundary into another 60mL syringe attached via tubing to a 150mL bottle. After 10 minutes, a few people managed to collect nearly 20mL of water in their bottles. In the shot at left you see the mad skills of winning team Brian and Brooke.
Event #5 - Lab trash hoops
First contestants shot pipet tips off a pipettor at 5 paces, then decrimped gas vial septa caps from 10 paces, then pages of rejected manuscripts from 15 paces. This event really separated our winners from the pack. Ben Colman, Matt Ross and Brian Lutz took 1st through 3rd place.
Our Champion!!!
Ben wins the coveted galvanized wire and twist tie crown.
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Judged by...
Special thanks to our guest judges Dr. Jim Heffernan and lab mascot Hannah Bernhardt
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