Thermodynamics B/C

[Things2do]

Do you think that they will change the allowed materials greatly?

I'm not sure if they will allow aerogel next year. Otherwise, probably not.

However, they might go back to the no foam thing from a few years back.

Was aerogel good this year? I talked to a bunch of the teams and from their experience aerogel was really bad at containing heat in the water

Our aerogel did great. We put it inside of a hollowed out foam cube to hold it in place. It would have been even better, but we didn't insulate the lid... It wasn't the best, but it was actually aerogel. Ebay saved us a lot of money that we didn't have there.

[JoeyC]

Do you think that they will change the allowed materials greatly?

I'm not sure if they will allow aerogel next year. Otherwise, probably not.

However, they might go back to the no foam thing from a few years back.

Was aerogel good this year? I talked to a bunch of the teams and from their experience aerogel was really bad at containing heat in the water

Aerogel is actually suprisingly bad at containing the heat in water. We used it and we got better results with our original device made out of foam board.

[arv101]

I know that this is late but does anyone remember what their final temperature at nats was?

[Neruos73]

Is Thermodynamics C very difficult and does it require advanced chemistry knowledge? I am a rising freshman looking at this event and I want to make sure if I might be able to do it.

[Unome]

Is Thermodynamics C very difficult and does it require advanced chemistry knowledge? I am a rising freshman looking at this event and I want to make sure if I might be able to do it.

Not too much chemistry knowledge. You can probably pick up a lot of the chemistry just by looking in a chem textbook, or even just Googling "enthalpy reactions" or such.

[Neruos73]

Is Thermodynamics C very difficult and does it require advanced chemistry knowledge? I am a rising freshman looking at this event and I want to make sure if I might be able to do it.

Not too much chemistry knowledge. You can probably pick up a lot of the chemistry just by looking in a chem textbook, or even just Googling "enthalpy reactions" or such.

Thanks!

[JoeyC]

Is Thermodynamics C very difficult and does it require advanced chemistry knowledge? I am a rising freshman looking at this event and I want to make sure if I might be able to do it.

Not too much chemistry knowledge. You can probably pick up a lot of the chemistry just by looking in a chem textbook, or even just Googling "enthalpy reactions" or such.

Thanks!

It's actually not that different from Thermo B; if you've studied AP Chem and Physics II it should be really easy (they're not allowed to go into differentials, as far as I've seen, which is a relief). The only things you should need to know from Chem is the ideal gas law, Gibbs free energy, Distributions, specific heat, and possibly RMS (relative molecular speed), and all of these are either basic algebra or simple concepts.

[Neruos73]

Not too much chemistry knowledge. You can probably pick up a lot of the chemistry just by looking in a chem textbook, or even just Googling "enthalpy reactions" or such.

Thanks!

It's actually not that different from Thermo B; if you've studied AP Chem and Physics II it should be really easy (they're not allowed to go into differentials, as far as I've seen, which is a relief). The only things you should need to know from Chem is the ideal gas law, Gibbs free energy, Distributions, specific heat, and possibly RMS (relative molecular speed), and all of these are either basic algebra or simple concepts.

Ah that's a relief. I thought there would be a bit of calculus involved since I saw it on a website that was recommended by SciOly.

[pikachu4919]

Thanks!

It's actually not that different from Thermo B; if you've studied AP Chem and Physics II it should be really easy (they're not allowed to go into differentials, as far as I've seen, which is a relief). The only things you should need to know from Chem is the ideal gas law, Gibbs free energy, Distributions, specific heat, and possibly RMS (relative molecular speed), and all of these are either basic algebra or simple concepts.

Ah that's a relief. I thought there would be a bit of calculus involved since I saw it on a website that was recommended by SciOly.

Yeah, SciOly generally discourages event supervisors from using too advanced calculus on their tests since they believe it’s almost certain that several people doing those events maybe will have not learned calculus yet in school or something. However, that doesn’t mean it’s completely not allowed, so some could appear if the event supervisor chooses to put it on their test.

In real life, yes, thermodynamics DOES involve lots of diffeq’s and calculus. We event supervisors just don’t always make you do it. If you wanna see examples of that, check out a YouTube channel called “Professor Thermo” (it’s the channel of the Professor I had for Thermodynamics of Biological Systems II this past semester), that’ll show you some extremely hardcore thermo.

[windu34]

Not too much chemistry knowledge. You can probably pick up a lot of the chemistry just by looking in a chem textbook, or even just Googling "enthalpy reactions" or such.

Thanks!

It's actually not that different from Thermo B; if you've studied AP Chem and Physics II it should be really easy (they're not allowed to go into differentials, as far as I've seen, which is a relief). The only things you should need to know from Chem is the ideal gas law, Gibbs free energy, Distributions, specific heat, and possibly RMS (relative molecular speed), and all of these are either basic algebra or simple concepts.

I wouldnt be so quick to limit yourself to what is covered in those classes. As an ES and someone who took both those classes, I typically know what to expect students to know from school and purposefully make my tests go much more in detail with those concepts. Even though the rules "limit" what I can test, many of those concepts have way more breadth than what is covered in AP classes. Take what you learned in those classes as a foundation and build off of it.

As far as calc goes, I would NEVER make students use calc on an exam. A lot of the basic formulas were derived using calc so knowing the end product of those derivations and understanding conceptually how the derivations were done can be helpful, but you should never be expected to derive anything using calc yourself on a test.