On 2/8/12 6:03 PM, Chris Albertson wrote:
The number one TN science fair project would have to be measuring the
speed of light using some simple, inexpensive method such as
reflecting sunlight from rotating mirrors
Actually, that's probably not a good project: it's been done, in almost
exactly that way.
The key to a winning project is doing something that nobody's done
before. It doesn't mean it has to be Nobel unique, but just different.
For instance, if you came up with an unusual way to measure speed of
light (other than all the classic spinning mirror, toothed wheel,
interferometer schemes)
Or, if you were to measure the Allen Deviation of a bunch of pendulums
of different types. This would be a good junior division (grade 6,7,8:
age 11-13) project because it would allow you to do some statistics
(very unusual in junior division, beyond the usual misapplication of
Excel Data Analysis tools), and if you could come up with some theory
about why the ADEV would vary with material or length (e.g. smaller
effect of air drag or something), you could test it.
In senior division, to be a top project, it would have to be something
like we discuss on this list. tvb's Cs clock verification of Einstein
might work, but you'd have to be pretty good at showing why it's not
just a rehash of someone else's traveling clock demo. Something with
coupled oscillator behavior in an interesting context would be
interesting. (measuring the small coupling between mechanical
oscillators on a concrete floor as a function of distance or orientation)
Building your own atomic standard from scratch would be impressive, but
would be unlikely to be a top winner at state or ISEF level (they tend
not to reward "design and build" engineering projects, even in the
engineering categories, unless you've got some novel design feature
you're trying.)
Characterizing some sort of oscillators could be a winner, especially if
it's a kind of oscillator with usefulness that hasn't been well
characterized before.
On Wed, Feb 8, 2012 at 5:44 PM, Jim Lux<jim...@earthlink.net> wrote:
While delayed, I would think that the signal freqs would still need to be
maintained... hmmm, maybe not... interesting science project... anyone?
anyone? ;-)
Jerry
----
I'm waiting to see a good time-nuts project at the science fair. (at any
level up to ISEF)
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