Experimental Design B/C

[coprolite_dipstick]

Has anyone ever gotten a chem-related prompt? I have a feeling we will be given chemicals at State, and I want to know the best way to design an experiment for that

I'm in Div B and I'm not sure if there's any difference in the degree of difficulty of the experiments between the two divisions, but I have seen a few chem-related prompts from other competitions. I wasn't in them myself, but there was one I've seen on the Law of Conservation of Mass -- materials were a thermometer, balance, balloon, some hydrochloric acid, sodium bicarbonate... think your basic volcano experiment.

I'd think they wouldn't give any chemicals that aren't completely safe for liability reasons... my guess is that if you get a chemistry experiment, it'll be more basic. I've also seen one on diffusion with different water temps and food coloring (Austin Regionals from 2015... I think. Not quite sure). Basically they just wanted you to see how temperature affected the diffusion process... again, that's Div B, so I don't know if that's of any help at all.

Good luck at state!

[cemsc10]

Has anyone ever gotten a chem-related prompt? I have a feeling we will be given chemicals at State, and I want to know the best way to design an experiment for that

I'm in Div B and I'm not sure if there's any difference in the degree of difficulty of the experiments between the two divisions, but I have seen a few chem-related prompts from other competitions. I wasn't in them myself, but there was one I've seen on the Law of Conservation of Mass -- materials were a thermometer, balance, balloon, some hydrochloric acid, sodium bicarbonate... think your basic volcano experiment.

I'd think they wouldn't give any chemicals that aren't completely safe for liability reasons... my guess is that if you get a chemistry experiment, it'll be more basic. I've also seen one on diffusion with different water temps and food coloring (Austin Regionals from 2015... I think. Not quite sure). Basically they just wanted you to see how temperature affected the diffusion process... again, that's Div B, so I don't know if that's of any help at all.

Good luck at state!

What was the hardest one you were given?

[watermydoing14]

Has anyone ever gotten a chem-related prompt? I have a feeling we will be given chemicals at State, and I want to know the best way to design an experiment for that

I'm in Div B and I'm not sure if there's any difference in the degree of difficulty of the experiments between the two divisions, but I have seen a few chem-related prompts from other competitions. I wasn't in them myself, but there was one I've seen on the Law of Conservation of Mass -- materials were a thermometer, balance, balloon, some hydrochloric acid, sodium bicarbonate... think your basic volcano experiment.

I'd think they wouldn't give any chemicals that aren't completely safe for liability reasons... my guess is that if you get a chemistry experiment, it'll be more basic. I've also seen one on diffusion with different water temps and food coloring (Austin Regionals from 2015... I think. Not quite sure). Basically they just wanted you to see how temperature affected the diffusion process... again, that's Div B, so I don't know if that's of any help at all.

Good luck at state!

What was the hardest one you were given?

Not sure who this was directed to or if it's asking specifically for chem prompts, but the hardest prompt I've seen is one that asked you to investigate turbulence. I think a good number of teams got tiered because they weren't sure how to define turbulence, so their entire experiments ended up being irrelevant to the prompt. Relevance to the prompt is key!!

[samlan16]

I'm in Div B and I'm not sure if there's any difference in the degree of difficulty of the experiments between the two divisions, but I have seen a few chem-related prompts from other competitions. I wasn't in them myself, but there was one I've seen on the Law of Conservation of Mass -- materials were a thermometer, balance, balloon, some hydrochloric acid, sodium bicarbonate... think your basic volcano experiment.

I'd think they wouldn't give any chemicals that aren't completely safe for liability reasons... my guess is that if you get a chemistry experiment, it'll be more basic. I've also seen one on diffusion with different water temps and food coloring (Austin Regionals from 2015... I think. Not quite sure). Basically they just wanted you to see how temperature affected the diffusion process... again, that's Div B, so I don't know if that's of any help at all.

Good luck at state!

What was the hardest one you were given?

Not sure who this was directed to or if it's asking specifically for chem prompts, but the hardest prompt I've seen is one that asked you to investigate turbulence. I think a good number of teams got tiered because they weren't sure how to define turbulence, so their entire experiments ended up being irrelevant to the prompt. Relevance to the prompt is key!!

I once saw teams get tripped up on surface tension because they thought measuring amplitude of waves resulting from dropping objects in water counted. Not really...

Also, those in which no topic has been assigned but you are given random materials are difficult because you often cannot devise a meaningful IV and DV with them.

[Jake R]

i have a question about experimental design.

our team is pretty good at the rubric and all that but we have trouble with time management (mostly the experiment, but some with the test as well). we have split up the test (one person writing, the other two running the experiment one of the other two doing the graph and the other doing the data table[quantitative data]) and most of the writing happens while were running the experiment, but we are spending like 30 out of 50 mins running the experiment, and probably 10-20 of that is finding out how to do it and dealing with problems. does anyone have any suggestions on how to save time with both the experiment (including finding out how to do it), and the test?

thanks!

[watermydoing14]

i have a question about experimental design.

our team is pretty good at the rubric and all that but we have trouble with time management (mostly the experiment, but some with the test as well). we have split up the test (one person writing, the other two running the experiment one of the other two doing the graph and the other doing the data table[quantitative data]) and most of the writing happens while were running the experiment, but we are spending like 30 out of 50 mins running the experiment, and probably 10-20 of that is finding out how to do it and dealing with problems. does anyone have any suggestions on how to save time with both the experiment (including finding out how to do it), and the test?

thanks!

Design experiments that will be quick. For example, if you have a physics-related prompt, maybe dropping something under different conditions would be a good experiment because each trial takes under a second to complete. Then you can talk in the error section about how since each trial was so short, there was human error in stopping the stopwatch at the right time or something (assuming you're measuring time it takes the object to fall).

[samlan16]

i have a question about experimental design.

our team is pretty good at the rubric and all that but we have trouble with time management (mostly the experiment, but some with the test as well). we have split up the test (one person writing, the other two running the experiment one of the other two doing the graph and the other doing the data table[quantitative data]) and most of the writing happens while were running the experiment, but we are spending like 30 out of 50 mins running the experiment, and probably 10-20 of that is finding out how to do it and dealing with problems. does anyone have any suggestions on how to save time with both the experiment (including finding out how to do it), and the test?

thanks!

Design experiments that will be quick. For example, if you have a physics-related prompt, maybe dropping something under different conditions would be a good experiment because each trial takes under a second to complete. Then you can talk in the error section about how since each trial was so short, there was human error in stopping the stopwatch at the right time or something (assuming you're measuring time it takes the object to fall).

I would recommend spending no more than 5 minutes designing the experiment. In that time, propose the IV, DV, measurement methods, and do a quick walkthrough of one trial. Try to predetermine experimental errors and set up the data table in that time as well.

After those 5 minutes, have one writer (hereafter the technical writer) transcribe all the aforementioned details. Within the following 15-30 minutes, the technical writer should be able to finish everything through the procedure and may be able to assist on the errors and practical applications. That is straightforward.

What it sounds like to me is that your team's time management problems result from the experiment itself. At the low end, that should take no more than 10 minutes; at the high end, 20. What I would recommend is making sure that both non-writing partners (hereafter the experimenters) are working as efficiently as possible by staying occupied. It does not take two people to drop a piece of tin foil, for example. That being said, one person could perform the experiment while the other does prep work for subsequent trials, like folding other sheets of tin foil.

Time management is critical in SO, and you could definitely draw upon techniques used to finish tests in other events for ExpD. Hope this helps!

[maxxxxx]

i have a question about experimental design.

our team is pretty good at the rubric and all that but we have trouble with time management (mostly the experiment, but some with the test as well). we have split up the test (one person writing, the other two running the experiment one of the other two doing the graph and the other doing the data table[quantitative data]) and most of the writing happens while were running the experiment, but we are spending like 30 out of 50 mins running the experiment, and probably 10-20 of that is finding out how to do it and dealing with problems. does anyone have any suggestions on how to save time with both the experiment (including finding out how to do it), and the test?

thanks!

What my team does is spend the first 2-3 minutes(at the most) thinking up an experiment as a team. We have one person running the experiment and collecting data and observations. The experiment hardly ever takes more than 5 minutes. The best way to think up and run an experiment smoothly is to have someone who is creative and good at physics who can come up with ideas, and another person who is quick at running the experiment and writing. You also need to communicate well as a team, and be able to talk while writing.

[Kenshi Takahashi]

Also just another tip in general.
When choosing the Experimental Design team, consider how good each member's handwriting is, especially because when you're rushing in competition to get everything on the rubric down, the handwriting can get pretty sloppy . My coach gave my Experimental Design team tests a lot, and the consistent comment she gave us was that a certain team member of ours had too messy handwriting and that she had to mark us down because she couldn't read it and therefore she had to chalk it down to us just not having the parts he wrote altogether. Which resulted in us consistently getting 1/3 of the rubric full of zeros (funnily enough, at competition we fared much better, maybe the judges could read his handwriting and our coach couldn't?).
So keep in mind that neatness is also really important.

[Kenshi Takahashi]

Oh and I'm not sure if someone has said this already...
Divide the work up before the competition based on each person's skills. For example, because procedures need pictures, you may want to assign that to a team member who is great at drawing (quickly). Because diagrams are a key part of the judge's comprehension of your experiment, the diagrams are extremely important and you want a good artist drawing those.
And even though you've divided the work up beforehand, make sure you still know the whole rubric. Have a test where you just write out the entire rubric from memory once in a while. Because if your team member forgot the part he or she was assigned, you don't want to have to just not do that part at all; if you remember all the parts you won't be missing any in case someone forgets their part.