Experimental Design B/C

[zyzzyva980]

See, I think a big part of the event is creativity and brainstorming. I prefer open-ended experiments rather than them telling you what to do.

[lakeSUPERIOR]

yeah,
coming up with a good experiment can also easily separate the good/not as good teams, so i dont know why it isn't as big of a deal

on the other side of things though, not having to come up with an experiment can save a bunch of time

[eta150]

Not really though, because it often limits your options for variables and s.o.c.s. Finding easily testable variables is much easier with an open-ended problem.

[Phenylethylamine]

Last year at Nationals, our team was positive that they had done extremely well, and they were all very experienced experimenters and lap writeup writers. So you can imagine that they were stunned to see that they had placed 47th. I don't actually know what experiment they conducted, but I believe that it was the eye-roll-worthy "analysis" of the effect of the mass of a pendulum on its period.

Last year at Nationals, the topic given was static electricity, for both B and C division. So if your team did anything related to a pendulum, they may well have been effectively "second-tiered" for doing an experiment not related to the given topic.

It's true that something that "eye-roll-worthy" is probably not your best bet- not least because you would have nothing to talk about in your analysis and conclusion- but make sure that your experiment is sufficiently simple that 1. setup doesn't occupy much of your time, 2. you have at least a vague idea of how it's going to turn out, and 3. whoever is in charge of writing your conclusion doesn't get a hand cramp simply from restating your hypothesis.

[Liv]

36th place(pm me if you wanna know)

[tclme elmo]

Not really though, because it often limits your options for variables and s.o.c.s. Finding easily testable variables is much easier with an open-ended problem.

what's socs?

[lakeSUPERIOR]

Standard of Comparison

some people also call it the control, but it's standard of comparison on the rules sheet

[tclme elmo]

Ha, I knew that.

[Liv]

See, I think a big part of the event is creativity and brainstorming. I prefer open-ended experiments rather than them telling you what to do.

Very true, but in the event you don't way go crazy whack with some far fetched experiment (while not going silly also). KISS - Keep It Simple Stupid!

[zyzzyva980]

Be creative, but not too creative, I suppose. Does that work?