Experimental Design

[cyanoacrylateismybff]

At the Cincinnati regionals, we had to deal with how a person's environment affects their vital capacity. We were given balloons, 3 different diameters of straws, a piece of string 50cm long, and the basic event stuff. Mind you, this was a challenging C test. We got fifth, but would have gotten 2nd because we lost all points for our data table due to a silly error of not labeling any of the data. we did get the gist of the topic and managed to create a good experiment.

Something bad: the balloons were latex. There were about 60 in the room. I am allergic to latex. Not a good combo. I did survive (obviously) but it was getting hard to breathe. I probably should have said something... LOL.

[Phenylethylamine]

Ouch, I can't believe they didn't check if anyone was allergic to latex, or even think of the fact that someone might be- it's a pretty common allergy.

[pentathlongirly]

i am in it and it is a lot of fun! i only which i wasn't the only girl out of six people. Oh well

[Avis_de-Incendia]

lol I LOVE this event. Fave one.

Your opinion: what is the hardest part about this event?

[cyanoacrylateismybff]

Only girl on the team? I know that feeling from robotics... Haha just show the guys that you're better than them.
The hardest part of the event... I guess it's trying to get a good experiment that you can test in 50 minutes, and getting enough data. To help, my team just memorized the rubric and practiced like CRAZY. If you have a team of 3 that works well together and is creative, you will be ok. Also: label EVERYTHING; your data and graphs must be complete.

This is a great event. Except for balloons... *shudders*

[Phenylethylamine]

Yeah, my team does a LOT of practice events (I hate ones where the task requires you to throw something- like paper airplanes- because normally you'd try to avoid throwing anything to make data collection easier...) and the kids from the high school team who got 1st at Nationals in Experimental in '06 have been coming down to the junior high to help mentor us. We work together pretty well, and my coach takes Experimental seriously enough that he decided to take one of my partners off of Disease instead of Exp. when she had a conflict between them He figured someone could be trained to know Disease, but Experimental you have to work well together on top of whatever skills you have.

[Avis_de-Incendia]

Yeah, you can't panic; you end up wasting a LOT of time in the end.

We had to do an experiment on adhesion. We were so frustrated that the tape was taking too long to fall off. IN the end we got 2nd, but I have a feeling that we could have done better.

[2win]

Well, you could have listened to me and tested the surface instead of the type of tape... It took forever for the scotch tape to fall off the ceramic tile! And then I was off in a corner doing the packet. lol. I'm very VERY amused that we got second.

[EastStroudsburg13]

How much of an idea are the event supervisors supposed to give you about what kind of experiment to do? Ours pretty much told us exactly what to do, but the Experimental Design Practice Wiki gives little to no scenario. Which is right?

[Phenylethylamine]

They are required to give you a topic, but it doesn't say in the rules how specific it has to be. Some sups give an insanely broad topic like "Physics", where the only limit of what experiment you do is what materials you have, while others give a detailed scenario in which there are only a very limited number of different experiments you can do. I recommend practicing at both ends of the spectrum, because you don't know what you'll get.