Technical Problem Solving C

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Re: Technical Problem Solving C

Post by anepictimelord »

durza0wnsyou wrote:Hey my team is having difficulty figuring out how to prepare for this test, we've already taken the one posted practice test. How are other people preparing and is there any other practice tests that our team could have a look at? Thanks!
and it is always a good idea to know stuff like conversions and area formulas, or any physics formulas just in case. You are supposed to be given a formula list but I have had proctors not give them out
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Re: Technical Problem Solving C

Post by Phenylethylamine »

anepictimelord wrote:
durza0wnsyou wrote:Hey my team is having difficulty figuring out how to prepare for this test, we've already taken the one posted practice test. How are other people preparing and is there any other practice tests that our team could have a look at? Thanks!
and it is always a good idea to know stuff like conversions and area formulas, or any physics formulas just in case. You are supposed to be given a formula list but I have had proctors not give them out
True; I've had a formula sheet on every TPS test I've taken, but it's still faster to have them memorized.
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Re: Technical Problem Solving C

Post by cngu23 »

durza0wnsyou wrote:Hey my team is having difficulty figuring out how to prepare for this test, we've already taken the one posted practice test. How are other people preparing and is there any other practice tests that our team could have a look at? Thanks!
look through the practice tests. most problems use similar methods to be solved.
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Re: Technical Problem Solving C

Post by Flavorflav »

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

Post by Seracon »

Flavorflav wrote: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.
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Re: Technical Problem Solving C

Post by Phenylethylamine »

Seracon wrote:
Flavorflav wrote: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.
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Re: Technical Problem Solving C

Post by iYOA »

was the tps test at nationals really bad? apparently, it was one of the worst events for many of the really good teams
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Re: Technical Problem Solving C

Post by Schrodingerscat »

iYOA wrote: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.)
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Re: Technical Problem Solving C

Post by catalanfury »

iYOA wrote: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.
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Re: Technical Problem Solving C

Post by iYOA »

Schrodingerscat wrote:
iYOA wrote: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
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