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chalker wrote:

istou wrote: The problem is changing the rules year to year, like measuring the temperature in the kettle or right after pouring water in the beaker (the difference is on average ~15C!). Our team spent 100+ hours calibrating the thermos they built. Last year in both county and South Cal, they got both predictions within 0.2 C. This year at LA county - 5 degrees off. Impossible! Now, we know why. The event supervisors (really nice and friendly guys, by the way) changed the initial temperature measurement method, which caused on average 5-6 C error at about 30 minutes point for about 100 ml volume.

Anyway, let's hope the event will continue forever!

Best luck

Keep the Heat and Thermodynamics are rotating out next year. We keep events in typically for 2 years in the Physics track. It'll be quite a while before they come back in.

Also, no matter how detailed we make the rules, there will always be event supervisors who interpret them slightly differently or deliberately change their local implementation either due to logistical reasons or because they don't pay attention to all the details. There isn't much we can do from a national level about that.

Thanks, Alan

Despite those small changes, our team did very well again in Thermo.
One event where the rules were really bent at South California was Technical problem solving. The rule 4 about scoring 80% for the lab and 20% for test question was violated - the event supervisor from Caltech decided to score the opposite, 20% for the Lab and 80% for the test, citing that he was not able to prepare proper lab for bio part. We filed the complain, but did not get any response from the arbitration.

Best luck in the future. We do enjoy the SO!

Hi Igor. The arbitration team actually tried to respond to the head-coach of the team since he was the one who filed the appeal. Unfortunately it went to his voice mail and his mail box was full so the arbitration team wasn't able to leave a response. The event was indeed scored 80% lab and 20% test question as written in the rules manual. The arbitration team and the scoring team made sure that this was the case when the event supervisor turned in the scores. After the tournament, I went through all of the tests and verified it independently. I'm sorry we were not able to reach your head-coach on the day of the event, but we would appreciate it if you could ask your head-coach to directly contact us about these issues so that we can improve our process in the future. Doing it on a forum like this doesn't guarantee that we will see this and prevent similar issues from happening in the future. Thank you very much.

bearasauras wrote:Hi Igor. The arbitration team actually tried to respond to the head-coach of the team since he was the one who filed the appeal. Unfortunately it went to his voice mail and his mail box was full so the arbitration team wasn't able to leave a response. The event was indeed scored 80% lab and 20% test question as written in the rules manual. The arbitration team and the scoring team made sure that this was the case when the event supervisor turned in the scores. After the tournament, I went through all of the tests and verified it independently. I'm sorry we were not able to reach your head-coach on the day of the event, but we would appreciate it if you could ask your head-coach to directly contact us about these issues so that we can improve our process in the future. Doing it on a forum like this doesn't guarantee that we will see this and prevent similar issues from happening in the future. Thank you very much.

Hi Bearasauras,
Thank you for your response. I will check with our head coach on Friday. I very much appreciate your help with taking care of that topic, Peter? or Allen?:)
Anyway, it was a great event! If you need any help in the future, please let me know. Maybe some lab equipment or test preparation/check, etc.
Thank you!

Does anyone know if we can use tinfoil in our keep the heat boxes? I saw a whole bunch of teams with it or some other reflective stuff at regionals. I think it might help me if I could use it.

maggeey wrote:Does anyone know if we can use tinfoil in our keep the heat boxes? I saw a whole bunch of teams with it or some other reflective stuff at regionals. I think it might help me if I could use it.

Seriously, do we need to have a sticky about this? Look in the rules and the rest if this thread, the answer should not be hard to find

harryk wrote:I've derived an equation that accounts for initial temp, ambient temp, volume of water, and time. All in one single equation that is based on a value taken from only one calibration plot. Though I'm too selfish to post it

This. I shall find this.

harryk wrote:

maggeey wrote:Does anyone know if we can use tinfoil in our keep the heat boxes? I saw a whole bunch of teams with it or some other reflective stuff at regionals. I think it might help me if I could use it.

Seriously, do we need to have a sticky about this? Look in the rules and the rest if this thread, the answer should not be hard to find

To make it simple - you can use reflecting foils, their very useful.

istou wrote: Hi Bearasauras,
Thank you for your response. I will check with our head coach on Friday. I very much appreciate your help with taking care of that topic, Peter? or Allen?:)
Anyway, it was a great event! If you need any help in the future, please let me know. Maybe some lab equipment or test preparation/check, etc.
Thank you!

Thanks Igor and thank you for supporting this program.
Peter

mattclaridge wrote:

harryk wrote:I've derived an equation that accounts for initial temp, ambient temp, volume of water, and time. All in one single equation that is based on a value taken from only one calibration plot. Though I'm too selfish to post it

This. I shall find this.

I would suggest rather than trying to fit it all with one equation to try and measure points every 25 ml and every 10 degrees. It is about 2 days of work but well worth it.
Don't forget to measure a temperature right after the liquid is poured into the beaker. That helped us a lot!

bearasauras wrote:

istou wrote: Hi Bearasauras,
Thank you for your response. I will check with our head coach on Friday. I very much appreciate your help with taking care of that topic, Peter? or Allen?:)
Anyway, it was a great event! If you need any help in the future, please let me know. Maybe some lab equipment or test preparation/check, etc.
Thank you!

Thanks Igor and thank you for supporting this program.
Peter

Thanks to you too, Peter! You are doing a huge thing for smart students! Good luck next year!