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JustDroobles wrote:Those ideas might be better incorporated if the event was designed so that competitors had to complete an experiment before competition. At competition the teams could turn in a lab report and take a test on experimental design and famous experiments. A huge problem with this set-up would be possible dishonesty with the actual completion of an experiment. However, higher scores would still be given to team that understand important concepts of experimental design and incorporate them into their report. Perhaps it would even be allowable to write-up a fictional experiment for the purposes of this event. Otherwise, an interview (similar to Sounds of Music) could be conducted to make sure the students were involved in and understood their experiment, or some sort of presentation with pictures or video could be turned in.

Phenylethylamine wrote:

JustDroobles wrote:Those ideas might be better incorporated if the event was designed so that competitors had to complete an experiment before competition. At competition the teams could turn in a lab report and take a test on experimental design and famous experiments. A huge problem with this set-up would be possible dishonesty with the actual completion of an experiment. However, higher scores would still be given to team that understand important concepts of experimental design and incorporate them into their report. Perhaps it would even be allowable to write-up a fictional experiment for the purposes of this event. Otherwise, an interview (similar to Sounds of Music) could be conducted to make sure the students were involved in and understood their experiment, or some sort of presentation with pictures or video could be turned in.

Yeah, I was also considering this kind of setup. Having to do an experiment beforehand and present it at the competition would have some advantages in terms of creativity/student input/freedom, but would present major logistical issues in scoring and so on. I suppose the rules would have to include some guidelines of what your experiment would have to contain... This would be an improvement over the current setup, but I'm not sure it's ideal.

awesome90220 wrote:Hey who was in teams 21-30? Yeah the event supervisor was great wasn't she? Yeah, eating lunch and watching a video at most likely full volume is the BEST thing to do while kids are taking a test, very smart.

siciscio wrote:I agree. There really isn't any good experiment that could go along with that. My team didn't do that. That wasn't very successful Just wondering for that kind of experiment, what would you put as the dependent and independent variables. You could sourness as the iv and pH as the dv but how would you have different levels of the iv? Thanks.

Emerald Lily wrote:

siciscio wrote:I agree. There really isn't any good experiment that could go along with that. My team didn't do that. That wasn't very successful Just wondering for that kind of experiment, what would you put as the dependent and independent variables. You could sourness as the iv and pH as the dv but how would you have different levels of the iv? Thanks.

If I remember correctly, we were given purified water, apple juice, Sprite, and lemonade. I don't think we were allowed to taste the liquids as a part of the experiment. (She said we could drink them after we were done testing if we wanted.) Sourness wouldn't exactly work for these materials since Sprite and apple juice aren't sour at all. If the supervisor said you could do a taste test, I guess the best way would be to assign numbers to how sour it is. For example, lemonade might be a 4 on a scale of 0-5, while apple juice would be -- well, a 0. At nationals, we did the standard pH vs. type of liquid and we made it into the top 10.