Technical Problem Solving C

[Phenylethylamine]

For #4 on the test exchange, don't you need two beakers to find specific heat? How can you do it with only one?

I suppose you could just heat the strip of metal directly on the hot plate, assuming you know what temperature the hot plate is at. The part I'm stuck at is finding the mass of the metal, though.

The problem is that in the case of metal directly on the hot plate, you don't know the metal is a) evenly heated or b) even at quite the same temperature as the hot plate itself anywhere.

[iYOA]

was the tps test at nationals really bad? apparently, it was one of the worst events for many of the really good teams

[Schrodingerscat]

was the tps test at nationals really bad? apparently, it was one of the worst events for many of the really good teams

I don't know about the actual event, but it has an R^2 of 0.0563 for event placing vs overall placing. (For comparison Chem Lab was 0.377, but I haven't looked all the events to know how they both compare overall.)

[catalanfury]

was the tps test at nationals really bad? apparently, it was one of the worst events for many of the really good teams

The test was only three questions graded solely on accuracy (work was not graded), so I felt that the test didn't measure the skill of the competitors extremely well, since one slip on a problem or the lack of a bit of crucial knowledge would pretty much mean getting a third of the test wrong (which might have been why some good teams didn't do well?).

And also, two of the three problems were based on measurements taken by the competitors (which might not have been extremely accurate), so there was a lot of room for error and randomness. For example, I know of a team that got 2 questions, guessed on the third, and still got a medal.

[iYOA]

was the tps test at nationals really bad? apparently, it was one of the worst events for many of the really good teams

I don't know about the actual event, but it has an R^2 of 0.0563 for event placing vs overall placing. (For comparison Chem Lab was 0.377, but I haven't looked all the events to know how they both compare overall.)

thats actually a really clever idea. i never thought to do a best fit regression

[Flavorflav]

They really, really need to do something about the way this event is scored.

[EastStroudsburg13]

Agreed. At states, the correlation for the results of TPS was way off. Some sort of consideration needs to be paid to knowing how to solve the problems, instead of merely looking at the answer. Maybe there needs to be more explicit directions in the event rules that place some emphasis on work.

[Phenylethylamine]

Agreed. At states, the correlation for the results of TPS was way off. Some sort of consideration needs to be paid to knowing how to solve the problems, instead of merely looking at the answer. Maybe there needs to be more explicit directions in the event rules that place some emphasis on work.

Yeah, while I like the idea of having three more complex stations instead of eight-ish simple ones, I preferred the old scoring method, where your process contributes to your score. I mean, it is Technical Problem Solving; it should be about how you solve the problem, not just the answer you get.

[Luo]

Agreed. At states, the correlation for the results of TPS was way off. Some sort of consideration needs to be paid to knowing how to solve the problems, instead of merely looking at the answer. Maybe there needs to be more explicit directions in the event rules that place some emphasis on work.

Yeah, while I like the idea of having three more complex stations instead of eight-ish simple ones, I preferred the old scoring method, where your process contributes to your score. I mean, it is Technical Problem Solving; it should be about how you solve the problem, not just the answer you get.

Agreed. Our team really did not like that the work shown was not taken into account as it normally is. I hope this is rectified for next year.