Keep the Heat B/Thermodynamics C

[sciencegeek999]

Sorry, I lost my rules sheet, but found it again:)

[adrenalynn]

I have to be honest: as a working scientist and six-time event coordinator at regional and state levels with a reputation for precise, fair, fun, no-expense-spared events... Hosting this event this year terrifies me.

Some of the student and coach observations early in the thread appear to me to be completely valid. I'm honestly wondering if it's too late to flee the country, change my name, and go into exile. . .

The imprecision in this event concerns me. And the statement "it's only ~18%" is mind-boggling when, in my past experience, <1% separates Gold through "no medal for you".

I'd be happy to chat with you offline, Chalker, about how you envision this working at Nationals so I can more closely approximate it.



[Full Disclosure: State listed in my profile is deliberately obfuscated so as not to provide any undue benefit to students stumbling upon my posts.]

[Frogger4907]

The imprecision in this event concerns me. And the statement "it's only ~18%" is mind-boggling when, in my past experience, <1% separates Gold through "no medal for you".

When you really think about it, No matter how consistent you try to make it, every time water is transferred to the beaker it will always be different. even if its the same supervisor. We have been experiencing everything from 5 degree differences in the final temp. Even if the supervisor does it the same way everytime, we don't know exactly how long each step of the transfer will take. and even the slightest change will throw off our prediction by 5 degrees. So at the National level with all thats on the line, 1st place could likely be determined by how lucky a teams guess/"prediction" is. This event should be about precision and previous results and calculations. Not by guessing to try to compensate for a change in the way the water will cool before it gets into the beaker/device.
[quote="Adrenalynn}I'd be happy to chat with you offline, Chalker, about how you envision this working at Nationals so I can more closely approximate it.
[/quote] me too

[chalker]

I'm not running the event at Nationals this year since I'm in charge of scoring, but I do believe that TI will be providing enough vernier probes to continuously collect data on all the devices during the entire test period.

That said, please keep in mind that this event will be returning next year. We are soon going to start looking at updates / changes to the events. I'll repeat my previous offer from back in October (see this post for the complete context: http://scioly.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php? ... 89#p183389 ):

That said, we are always open to suggestions / input. You suggest 'completely rewriting' the procedures for this event. Please provide us with a draft or specific changes to make and I'll be happy to discuss and consider them. Note the following considerations need to be kept in mind: they can't' be too long / detailed since we are limited to 2 pages in the rule book, they have to be able to be accomplished by the majority of event supervisors at the hundreds of regional tournaments (meaning no really expensive or complicated processes), and they have to allow for at a minimum of 10 teams to compete simultaneously in an hour long block.

[Schrodingerscat]

If I recall, one of your objections to requiring the event supervisors to provide a temperature once the water was inside of the device was the availability of thermometers. However, why not allow teams to bring their own thermometer to get an unofficial measurement during the setup period prior to giving temperature prediction? (In fact, I am going to submit an official clarification to see if it is allowed now.)

[chalker]

in my past experience, <1% separates Gold through "no medal for you".

This is an interesting statement that doesn't match my experience. Can you provide any data? I"m not sure if you mean from a team total standpoint or an event standpoint. Some data points I quickly dug up from last year are below. I've used Optics for comparison since they it also involves a 'hands on activity' and a 'written test'

# points between 1st and 6th place (i.e. difference between Gold and 'no medal for you')
Nationals C Overall: 293 - 197 = 96 (~50%)
Nationals C Optics: 91.1 - 81.3 = 9.8 (~10%)
Nationals B Overall: 346 - 244 = 102 (~40%)
Ohio C Optics: 81.0 - 66.4 = 14.6 (~20%)
Ohio B Optics: 72.3 - 63.2 = 9.2 (~15%)
Ohio C Overall: 257 - 76 = 181 (~200%)
Ohio B Overall: 276 - 69 = 207 (~250%)

[chalker]

If I recall, one of your objections to requiring the event supervisors to provide a temperature once the water was inside of the device was the availability of thermometers. However, why not allow teams to bring their own thermometer to get an unofficial measurement during the setup period prior to giving temperature prediction? (In fact, I am going to submit an official clarification to see if it is allowed now.)

Standard caveat that this isn't the place for official clarifications. That said, I like this idea and think it clearly falls under General Rule #2 (http://soinc.org/ethics_rules), especially since we explicitly allow teams to bring tools and say that teams don't have to provide an estimate until the end of the testing period. Of course we'd have to somehow prevent teams from 'cheating' by leaving the thermometers in the beakers right up until the very end and then recording the temp.

[chalker7]

If I recall, one of your objections to requiring the event supervisors to provide a temperature once the water was inside of the device was the availability of thermometers. However, why not allow teams to bring their own thermometer to get an unofficial measurement during the setup period prior to giving temperature prediction? (In fact, I am going to submit an official clarification to see if it is allowed now.)

I don't recall either of us specifically saying this, but it does address a concern about running the event at many regionals where resources may be limited. Remember, these rules are not just being used at the National and State tournaments.
I'll be interested to see the results of your clarification. Also, I want to reiterate what my brother said above, check out that link and if you have any recommendations that fill those requirements, we'd love to hear them.

[Frogger4907]

[quote=Chalker7]The problem is that everyone is focusing on just one aspect of this event. While I agree that it would make prediction easier if the "initial" loading temperature were known, it is nearly impossible to control that initial temperature for all the teams.[/quote]
You don't have to have the same initial temperature for all the teams...
Which according to the way the rules state to run the event now, everyone having the same initial temperature isn't going to happen anyway!

[OldSpice]

This is just my opinion, but I feel like most of the problems everyone is discussing could be solved by making the event a walk in event rather than having everyone run it in the same time slot.