Experimental Design B/C

[Flavorflav]

When you do your regression analysis, do you have to actually calculate Least Squares and come up with an equation, or are you more or less eyeballing best fit?

[jayadh]

regionals was today~ water displacment was the topic, and we thought we did amazing but no medal oh well we get another chance at STATES!

[amerikestrel]

Does anyone know where I could find an example lab report for this event?

[Teal]

At regionals, we dropped pieces of tissue paper from a meter above the ground.
Medaled for it.

What?

[soccerchamp30]

Does anyone know what types of topics and materials the judges give you? how is the judging done? don't different judges have different opinions on the experiments?

[packer-backer91]

Does anyone know what types of topics and materials the judges give you? how is the judging done? don't different judges have different opinions on the experiments?

From my experience at least, I saw a good verity of materials/topics. A few examples that I have had are:
[a] Physics Weights and string (make a pendulum, I found it ironic from some of the guides that my coaches all said they would never give you materials to make pendulums because they have been done so much).
Chemistry Baking Soda, vinegar, balloons, 2L bottle
[c] thermodynamics hot water, ice, room temp water, thermometer with half of numbers covered with tape (objective was to devise a way so that you can make a guess of what the original temp of the hot water is).
[d] Chemistry salt's (NaCl, KCl, CaCl), water, Bunsen burner, thermometer (see how salts affect boiling temp of water). Also have been given one salt and we tested how the amount of salt changes the boiling temp.

I can give more if anyone wants my complete list once its done [as a side project I'm still at work on writing tips/stuff I learned from the event for my old high school and middle school]

[willowmist]

Does anyone know what types of topics and materials the judges give you? how is the judging done? don't different judges have different opinions on the experiments?

It really varies from competition to competition. At our state competition today, we were given a prompt of using the materials given to demonstrate how stress and unhealthy lifestyles affect our bodies and general health. We were stumped for a few minutes, but my partner came up with the idea of using the siphon pump to measure the rate of pumping-- first, with no stoppers; second, with one stopper with a large hole; then, another stopper with a smaller hole. We divided the time necessary to transfer all the water from one cup to the next by the number of pumps (we found that the time taken for each pump varied, preventing us from using a constant speed), giving us the rate. In the conclusion and future use sections, we connected this to blood flow and such; we ended up getting third place.

As for how the judging is done, take a look at this rubric: http://soinc.org/sites/default/files/up ... 202011.pdf Even if judges have different opinions, they mainly judge you based on how well you follow the requirements in the rubric.

[ILoveEgretsClub]

Hi.I'm doing Experimental, but i sorta need help.

Can anyone give examples of IV and Qualitative Observations? Like what you would write for an event.

[amerikestrel]

Hey guys, what would you do for Example 8 on the Experimental Design Practice Wiki? Me and my partner are stumped.

[Skink]

Hey guys, what would you do for Example 8 on the Experimental Design Practice Wiki? Me and my partner are stumped.

I can come up with a few...creative...experiments, but the most straightforward one seems to be to change up the type of writing utensil used since they give you three of them. ANd do what with them? You could hold them perpendicular to a sheet of paper and draw a line. Measure the thickness, rinse and repeat. Your dependent variable, then, is thickness of the writing utensil. You could also make a dot with each writing instrument and measure its diameter. Then compare the diameters of dots made by each writing instrument.

I suppose you could also roll each across the table and see how far they go, you know, if they differ. This would be a pretty poor experiment, though...