alecfxl wrote:
Our kids have asked about the salinometer. I saw no clarifications on soinc and a search brought up only someone mentioning graduated cylinders. So our question is if this portion of the event has everyone testing out of the same public container or can the students ask for some solution to place into their own containers for testing?
For div C, there was also the question of whether circuits and/or multimeters can be used. The official clarifications state that there's no restriction on the type of as long as it is constructed by the team. Does that forbid any use of multimeters? Competition is around the corner so it'd be great to get some responses from knowledgeable people soon. I've also submitted the question to soinc but they usually take very long to answer.
At our regionals, they had us put our salinometers into their container of sample water. They used graduated cylinders though, and so everyone's meters were able to fit; the water level was relatively high, too, so even if a meter could not fit in a graduated cylinder, it could reach the water to test.
I'm pretty sure you can use a multimeter, BUT it must be built by the team, not prebuilt. We were going to make one, because we had lots of help in the electrical engineering area, but it was going to be hard to calibrate, so we decided against it.
My salinometer was pretty bad looking (calibration wise, like, the circles I drew around the tube were kind of crooked...), but I was accurate and precise, and practiced with it lots, so we were on the dot. :3
k-tx. retiring from scioly.