nendawen wrote:Previous to this year teams “off topic” were tiered. This meant that a topic needed to be provided by the supervisor. Many supervisors did not do this, but that was a violation of the spirit of the event.
The topic allowed for multiple purposes which meant multiple experiments.
The SOSI material from 2018 and the PA Coaches Clinic material from the Fall of 2018 clearly define the changes in the event for 2019 which include a clearly defined purpose which leads to a clearly defined experiment. This helps remove supervisor bias from section scoring and a equal comparison of tie breakers.
The days of trying to trick teams by having them try to guess the topic are over.
As for the rustin experiment, it was pretty clear. It was a pendulum. Since you must do an experiment that actually works there was only 1 solution. Change length. (You can’t change gravity)
If you did anything else you would find that there was no effect to changing angle, mass, ect and you would struggle to get all of the points in some of the sections.
First of all, teams this year are tiered as well for not being on topic, it's just called a score multiplier instead of a tier. Second of all, I'm talking about the Rustin experiment from 2019- it was not a pendulum. Third of all, I don't think we're on the same page here. Earlier, you were talking about the rules, not SOSI. Maybe NSO will put this in the official rules eventually, but right now it just says to provide a topic, not a set statement of purpose. The majority of practice experiments I have seen and competitions I have been to have a general topic that gently guides participants rather than creating the experiment for him. However, I honestly don't think that making a clearly defined purpose/experiment would be beneficial to the event. I understand the benefits of setting clear guidelines on the experiment, but not allowing teams to uniquely interpret the prompt is quite frankly undermining the purpose of the event. Why even have the event if all you're allowed to do is follow exactly what the proctor tells you to do? Yes, of course different teams will have slightly different results and observations, but doing this wouldn't allow them to use any resourcefulness, quick thinking, or creativity if all they could do was one experiment. The whole point of Experimental Design is to encourage teamwork, analysis, and problem solving, but if you literally hand the problem to competitors already solved, that's completely defeating of, dare I say, the purpose of scientific analysis itself. Scientists are supposed to create an experiment based on their own observations and put their own interpretation into what the materials they have can do. Simply giving competitors 3 pieces of paper and saying "What effect does the type of paper have on the amount of time the paper airplane stays in the air?" doesn't let them come to their own conclusion after analyzing the materials as effectively as just saying "Paper Airplanes", or even at all. Implementing these so-called rule changes would completely limit the observational freedom of participants. No one is "tricking teams" and no one is having to "guess the topic", event supervisors are simply providing competitors with materials, guiding them slightly, and overall letting them do the event on their own. Giving away the statement of problem would essentially mean that the event supervisors are doing the event for the competitors, and that is not what Experimental Design or any event is about at all.
