What is this site?

This site was designed and built from the ground up by Brooks Boyd while under the employ of the Science department of the University of Wisconsin - Stout. Troy Bennett (CCNP, CCNA) provided networking and security expertise that contributed to the system, and Dr. Forrest Schultz directed the project and provided the information needed to keep the site consistent with the rules and procedures of the Wisconsin Science Olympiad. The goal of the site was to provide a fast, accurate scoring system for the Wisconsin Science Olympiad; to keep track of Student, Coach, and competing event information for over forty schools competing in over two dozen events, and in the span of a day, allow judges to rank the schools and award a victor.

Why call it Avogadro?

Avogadro is the brain child of the Chemistry and Applied Science departments of the University of Wisconsin - Stout. Since it's primary goal is to automate the crunching of a large quantity of numbers, sort them according to several rules, and spit out a victor of the competition, we wanted the choose a name that portrayed this primary directive. Avogadro's number (6.02x10²³), the number of atoms in a mole, is the basis of most all other Chemical formulas. Hence, this site became Avogadro, since it is the basis for all the result conclusions for the competition.

What can it do for you?

The WSO 2003 competition was a test for the online scoring system, and it successfully showed that an online scoring system would be beneficial, and could work to speed up the process of scoring the competition. WSO 2004 saw the creation of Avogadro; the fully fleshed out site with much more security, options, and ways of displaying the data than the original. Avogadro was designed with CGI scripts to enable the system to be ported to other state competitions easily (CGI is supported on most all web servers). Future improvements may include a PHP/SQL version for added security and flexibility. If you represent another Science Olympiad State and would like to use Avogadro, contact Forrest Schultz at schultzf@uwstout.edu. If you would like to employ Brooks Boyd to design a dynamic site catering to your specific event or project needs, contact Brooks Boyd at BoydB@MidnightDesignHQ.com.