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Hey, Science Olympiad! I had a few questions related to my thermometer and measurements.


1. Are we allowed to use our own thermometer?
2. If 1. is correct, are we allowed to use a thermometer with a digital reading & thermo-couple?
3. Do our temperature readings and predictions include decimal points?
4. Does the thermometer stay in the device during the experiment?

Thank you!

Interesting question. +1!

waterdragon321 wrote:Hey, Science Olympiad! I had a few questions related to my thermometer and measurements.


1. Are we allowed to use our own thermometer?
2. If 1. is correct, are we allowed to use a thermometer with a digital reading & thermo-couple?
3. Do our temperature readings and predictions include decimal points?
4. Does the thermometer stay in the device during the experiment?

Thank you!

1. Yes
2. yes
3. it depends what thermometer the es uses, but i think they would use ones with decimal points.
4. It could, depending on Event Supervisor.

1. Yes, you can use your own thermometer to make your prediction, but the ES uses his or her own thermometer to record source temperature and end temperature.
2. Yes
3. Yes, everything is rounded to nearest tenth
4. Normally no

For number 4, is the answer really usually not?
I've competed in this event several times now. About half the time, the thermometer stayed in the device the entire time--the ES had usually managed to acquire labquests, so that they could set the collection time, and have a volunteer start the thermometer the second we got the water. I have found that when this didnt happen, your time was slightly off, sometimes by as much as 4 minutes which is a difference of a degree or two, and can easily mess up my prediction.

C8H10N4O2! wrote:For number 4, is the answer really usually not?
I've competed in this event several times now. About half the time, the thermometer stayed in the device the entire time--the ES had usually managed to acquire labquests, so that they could set the collection time, and have a volunteer start the thermometer the second we got the water. I have found that when this didnt happen, your time was slightly off, sometimes by as much as 4 minutes which is a difference of a degree or two, and can easily mess up my prediction.

I never had a competition where they did this last year. Since they added the rule with the cotton ball this year, it doesn't really make sense to keep the thermometer in in my opinion.

UTF-8 U+6211 U+662F wrote:

C8H10N4O2! wrote:For number 4, is the answer really usually not?
I've competed in this event several times now. About half the time, the thermometer stayed in the device the entire time--the ES had usually managed to acquire labquests, so that they could set the collection time, and have a volunteer start the thermometer the second we got the water. I have found that when this didnt happen, your time was slightly off, sometimes by as much as 4 minutes which is a difference of a degree or two, and can easily mess up my prediction.

I'd never had a competition where they did this last year. Since they added the rule with the cotton ball this year, it doesn't really make sense to keep the thermometer in in my opinion.

I've also never had this happen. I'm lucky enough that my coach runs thermo at invites/regionals, and I've made sure that she knows how important time is. They use multiple stopwatches, and have 2 LabQuests to measure at the end of your time interval. At OH state tournament last year they had no idea how to time, and left the thermometer in the whole time. I guess it depends in the ES...