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My teams actually pretty decent, except that we completely seriously drop the ball on every science question ever. Does anybody have any help/tips/lists/other on how to study for science?

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Take AP Physics, chemistry, and biology if your school offers them. If it doesn't, take them at a college, because they're useful anyway, or at least buy a textbook for them online and read it. You'll learn a lot of useful and interesting stuff and become much better at quizbowl science that way.

Well, there's a pretty large difference between quizbowl science and "real" science, IMO.

You could read the Campbell-Reece AP Biology book like a bible like one of my friends does, but still get beaten on biology because someone else decided to go on Wikipedia and look up random names associated with it. With chemistry, someone may know how to use the Henderson-Hasselbalch equation to compute the concentrations of a weak acid and its conjugate base to make a perfect buffer, but someone else might beat them on it just because they cared to look up some other obscure equation related to it. It's the same with other science subjects (and I guess with all quizbowl but it's especially magnified in science). But maybe I think that just because I go to a math and science academy where we are drilled with a few hours of real science a day, including a day dedicated to go to a university to conduct research with professors.

Anyways, if you want to "study" "science" you should probably just read some packets and try to look up answer lines you see on Wikipedia. You could take an AP course - AP chem, bio, physics C - but it's inefficient (although it might help you actually understand the material). Especially for NAQT, read books about elements (since quizbowl seems to love tossing up elements over and over) even if knowing obscure applications for elements is hardly relevant to high school science. Reading books about specific scientists and their work also will help because scientists are pretty common in the quizbowl canon also.

sssssssskkkk wrote:Anyways, if you want to "study" "science" you should probably just read some packets and try to look up answer lines you see on Wikipedia. You could take an AP course - AP chem, bio, physics C - but it's inefficient (although it might help you actually understand the material). Especially for NAQT, read books about elements (since quizbowl seems to love tossing up elements over and over) even if knowing obscure applications for elements is hardly relevant to high school science. Reading books about specific scientists and their work also will help because scientists are pretty common in the quizbowl canon also.

I don't think that reading books about the elements and the biographies of scientists is more useful than reading an AP science textbook. Scientist questions are pretty hard to write well without including meaningless biographical information and probably aren't too common at nationals tournaments. You could best study elements by simply searching through a database and memorizing the names of random processes.

In quizbowl environments, science is actually spelled "SCIENCE!!!!!!!" or something along those lines.
I think the best way is to read questions, see what comes up, and then from that do a little research into the important concepts, equations, and theories around a specific topic.

Joe N wrote:Take AP Physics, chemistry, and biology if your school offers them. If it doesn't, take them at a college, because they're useful anyway, or at least buy a textbook for them online and read it. You'll learn a lot of useful and interesting stuff and become much better at quizbowl science that way.

I somewhat disagree with relating AP Physics and Chemistry with becoming better at Quizbowl Science. Sure, they will help you develop a strong base for Quizbowl Physics and Chemistry, but, they are HIGHLY computation based. You will spend a lot of time memorizing, applying, and evaluating equations rather than actually developing depth in the subject(s). They are a good starting point for bettering one's self at Physics and Chemistry, but you need to expand upon what you learn by using supplementary texts. For example, you can read A Brief History of Time and get great knowledge about time and space, the nature of elementary particles, black-holes, etc.

Moreover, AP Biology is very good in terms of breadth and depth of knowledge. But in my class, we didn't cover as much in depth as I had hoped. However, the textbook we used (Campbell-Reece, 9th edition) was GODLY in terms of information. I remember powering so many Bio tossups by simply recalling tidbits of information I read in the texts of the book that were never actually covered in the class.

Ultimately, I recommend that you try to avoid more computation based texts when you are working on learning Science. Although they are somewhat helpful, you really need to seek alternatives that focus more on multiple applications of equations or processes related/involving certain elements and/or compounds.

Basically, be well read on topics.

AP classes are still quite important if you want to do well in college, though! DON'T SKIP OUT ON THEM BECAUSE OF QUIZBOWL!

Edit: Horrid grammar.

Wurzel-Flummery wrote:In quizbowl environments, science is actually spelled "SCIENCE!!!!!!!" or something along those lines.
I think the best way is to read questions, see what comes up, and then from that do a little research into the important concepts, equations, and theories around a specific topic.

I used to do this before I took AP courses; it helps very much as well.

Faiyad wrote:

Joe N wrote:Take AP Physics, chemistry, and biology if your school offers them. If it doesn't, take them at a college, because they're useful anyway, or at least buy a textbook for them online and read it. You'll learn a lot of useful and interesting stuff and become much better at quizbowl science that way.

I somewhat disagree with relating AP Physics and Chemistry with becoming better at Quizbowl Science. Sure, they will help you develop a strong base for Quizbowl Physics and Chemistry, but, they are HIGHLY computation based. You will spend a lot of time memorizing, applying, and evaluating equations rather than actually developing depth in the subject(s). They are a good starting point for bettering one's self at Physics and Chemistry, but you need to expand upon what you learn by using supplementary texts. For example, you can read A Brief History of Time and get great knowledge about time and space, the nature of elementary particles, black-holes, etc.

You do have a point there. I guess what's worked best for me was to take Physics B (College Physics, Serway and Faughn) which taught me the computational stuff, while at the same time reading Conceptual Physics (Hewitt), which both explained the theoretical concepts better than the college book and was more applicable to quizbowl. Between those and taking Physics C this year (Physics for Scientists and Engineers, Serway and Beichner) I have learned "useful" physics and quizbowl physics.

Edit: By the way, neither of the Serway books are very good if you're looking for something that will just explain concepts. Hewitt is much better at that, although he does hardly any math beyond Algebra I.

Faiyad wrote:Campbell-Reece

As far as I know, this is a standard textbook in college level biology courses, so a lot of college writers use it as a source for clues in tossups. Therefore, using it to study has to be a good idea.

Kwang the Ninja wrote:

Faiyad wrote:Campbell-Reece

As far as I know, this is a standard textbook in college level biology courses, so a lot of college writers use it as a source for clues in tossups. Therefore, using it to study has to be a good idea.

I can think of like five Toss-Ups that I have gotten with specific clues and examples I remember from that book. Like I said, its GODLY.

I think that once you establish a 'real' knowledge base (i.e from reading books like the aforementioned Campbell-Reece or AP prep books for chem/physics/bio), reading wikipedia and other sources is the best way to become knowledgeable about the kind of clues you'll be given. For example, knowing that malaria confers sickle cell anemia resistance isn't going to help you when someone knows to buzz and say malaria when they hear 'duffy antigens'. So once you establish some base you're going to have to go much more in depth on each possible answer line/topic.

NolanM wrote:I think that once you establish a 'real' knowledge base (i.e from reading books like the aforementioned Campbell-Reece or AP prep books for chem/physics/bio), reading wikipedia and other sources is the best way to become knowledgeable about the kind of clues you'll be given. For example, knowing that malaria confers sickle cell anemia resistance isn't going to help you when someone knows to buzz and say malaria when they hear 'duffy antigens'. So once you establish some base you're going to have to go much more in depth on each possible answer line/topic.

Going along with that - in a notebook, write down a topic that you have learned. Next, go online and find out more advanced information about the topic. For example, once you learn that Sickle-Cell Anemia is most prevalent amongst blacks, you can read-up on how it is also a single-nucleotide polymorphism that initiates the coding for Valine over Glutamic Acid in a haemoglobin chain.

I hate to avoid actually "learning" things when related to quiz bowl, because that is actually the point of doing quiz bowl: to get exposure and understanding of topics that you normally would not. However, the science questions are usually extremely in depth, especially at higher level tournaments. If you want to power a bio or chem question, you aren't generally going to glean that information from an AP bio or chem textbook. There is simply too much information in those books, however useful it may be for give-aways or the 1st and 2nd part bonuses. I think the way to go is to listen carefully to the early give-aways of the questions, write them down, then write down the answer. Look up the early give-aways on wikipedia, then look up the answer on acfdb or another question database to get other give-aways.

cherenkov wrote:I hate to avoid actually "learning" things when related to quiz bowl, because that is actually the point of doing quiz bowl: to get exposure and understanding of topics that you normally would not. However, the science questions are usually extremely in depth, especially at higher level tournaments. If you want to power a bio or chem question, you aren't generally going to glean that information from an AP bio or chem textbook. There is simply too much information in those books, however useful it may be for give-aways or the 1st and 2nd part bonuses. I think the way to go is to listen carefully to the early give-aways of the questions, write them down, then write down the answer. Look up the early give-aways on wikipedia, then look up the answer on acfdb or another question database to get other give-aways.

As already mentioned in this thread, Campbell's biology is the golden standard. You will be a great high school biology player if you make that your bible. You can find the 6th or 7th edition on the cheap (2001 seems long ago, but college freshman biology hasn't changed as much this decade as previous decades). At the regular high school level, there are plenty of things you could power off just that book. There's a tendency to make quiz bowl harder, but realistically using this book will put you in the top 2% of good HS players (in science overall, not just bio).

I would say the best thing to do is take the class/read AP books just because the questions get easier to listen to. I'm only two months into AP Bio, but unlike before, I'm a lot more effective at Bio questions because the terminology isn't so weird to me anymore. Once you can really start paying attention to the questions and less on the meaning of particular words, you're a lot more likely to remember concepts and improve.