Keep the Heat B/Thermodynamics C

[NinjaChicken]

It's that time of year again where those of us on the national rules committees start working on the rules for next year. As I've done in the past, I'm soliciting suggestions for rules changes for Keep the Heat / Thermodynamics. Please don't just say "I don't like XXXX", but rather make concrete suggestions (i.e. "Change XXX to YYYY" or "Remove ZZZZZZ" or "Add WWWWW"). I can't promise you we'll actually implement your ideas, but they will be noted and passed on to the rules committee for discussion.

For this event, I'd say standardizing the transfer of water would be nice. I liked the invitationals where the ES already had the water measured out (i.e. 50 ml in a baby food jar) and being heated rather than the invitational where they had a large volume of water being heated, and took 2 minutes to measure out exactly the volume neede for both beakers. In that time, the temp went from 71 to 55... Threw off my prediction completely.

In short, possibly outlining exactly what to do during the transfer so that teams can practice that way and it won't be open to interpretation.

[sciencegeek999]

Got 3rd at Regionals. The test was really hard and had a bunch of stuff I didn't even know. People who still need to go to Regionals: Beware. (just kidding)

[hmcginny]

I agree with Ninja chicken, it might be useful to add a line in the rules with a suggested way to run the transfer.

I guess the way to really vary this event from year to year would be to change the required materials list, perhaps allowing access to some other vague phrase similar like organic granular material this year. By adding a whole new spectrum of materials you can stop people from just reusing devices from previous years.

Another idea is to add some sort of efficiency score, as in have mass or volume somehow factor into the scoring. Mass would be much easier to calculate, but the devices that I have seen so far have either been cubes/rectangular prisms or cylinders, so volume might not be impossible to determine. If you valued smaller devices over larger ones, you would force teams to attempt to optimize their size for their insulation value. Just some thoughts.

[Schrodingerscat]

Yeah, in addition to standardizing water transfer, as I have been advocating all year, I did also like the idea in the old trial rules where the mass counted against your score, and volume as you also suggested would also be good.

[sciencegeek999]

For us, the water was heated in a coffee machine. A probe was connected to the laptop, and the laptop had a timer, too. People got water at different times, but in the end, everyone's water was measured after the same amount of time for everyone. This system was much better.

[Scipuppy]

Hey, I was wondering if anyone knows of some good sites to use for the content? Competition soon, would really like to know

[foreverphysics]

Long, but excellent source of notes.
Great notes and explanations; there are even sample problems. Just click on the "next" button when done with that page and continue on like that.
Great page for learning thermo--just click around and see what you find
Very nice research page

[SmalSci]

In the rules it says that you can have up to 4 plots on the graph. Is this all that is going to be graded? Can you have more?
Please reply soon compition in 3days

[chalker7]

In the rules it says that you can have up to 4 plots on the graph. Is this all that is going to be graded? Can you have more?

Your question has been officially answered here: http://soinc.org/node/263 (it's the second one down.)

[SmalSci]

Thanks. Was panicking

In the rules it says that you can have up to 4 plots on the graph. Is this all that is going to be graded? Can you have more?

Your question has been officially answered here: http://soinc.org/node/263 (it's the second one down.)