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satvik03 wrote:Does anyone know how to write a standard of comparison, like what qualifies as one. We always just use the control group thing, and that part is one that we have struggled on in the past two competitions. Thanks!

The control group is the standard of comparison. You have to make sure that it is a part of the experiment with the manipulated variable being unmanipulated. For example, a pendulum experiment with a cup and marbles would have their SOC be the cup without any marbles. In experiments where this is harder to define and the manipulated variable is not a quantity, but a type, you have to choose the one that is most "neutral." For example, a paper airplane with copy paper, tissue paper, and card stock would probably choose the copy paper because it is medium thickness and would have an air resistance in between that of the other types.

Thanks!

Hey, does anyone have new prompt ideas to practice? My partners and I have been stuck in a rut of pendulums, rolling/bouncing balls, and properties of water (these are pretty much the only prompts at the invitational level, but that's besides the point) and we need to practice more experiments.

zsg11 wrote:Hey, does anyone have new prompt ideas to practice? My partners and I have been stuck in a rut of pendulums, rolling/bouncing balls, and properties of water (these are pretty much the only prompts at the invitational level, but that's besides the point) and we need to practice more experiments.

One prompt I had was with a seesaw. It was pretty fun.

- Energy Transfer (and potential/kinetic energy)
- Work
- Paper Strength
- Acid-Base Reactions
- Magnetism
- Newton's Laws (any of them)
- Paper Helicopters
- Paper Airplanes
- Simple Machines
- Rebound
- Adhesiveness

zsg11 wrote:Hey, does anyone have new prompt ideas to practice? My partners and I have been stuck in a rut of pendulums, rolling/bouncing balls, and properties of water (these are pretty much the only prompts at the invitational level, but that's besides the point) and we need to practice more experiments.

Some are on the [wiki]Experimental Design/Practice[/wiki], but beware as some of these are...not so good (no offense to the creators) - no topic :/

does anyone know how to approach an experiment with the topic of Distribution? I assume this means distribution in statistics

Hey fellow user,
I was wondering if any of you guys know any formulas for these new rules since we had one before that used to allow us to place high every time, but it doesn't work anymore. Thanks for the help!

MoMoney$$$;)0) wrote:Hey fellow user,
I was wondering if any of you guys know any formulas for these new rules since we had one before that used to allow us to place high every time, but it doesn't work anymore. Thanks for the help!

Use the scoring guidelines in the rules to get maximum points.

So I just came across an experiment, and have had similar ones in the past, using 4 different types of materials where the topic is absorbency. We had limited measuring devices: only the stopwatch and ruler we can use in competitions. My initial thoughts were doing something like porosity vs amount of water absorbed, or density vs amount of water absorbed. However there would be no way to measure porosity and density with the experiment given, so I would do something for the IV like: low density, medium density, and high density, and the experiment would use a bar graph. Is this even allowed since we couldn’t measure density and only used qualititative observations to determine this? Also what would the SOC be? Any ideas on this, and also for a better experiment idea with this topic?