On 5/14/18 1:00 PM, ed breya wrote:
I don't know what sort of scientific level this contest is geared for,
but would guess that for middle-school level, extreme numbers-oriented
analysis of esoteric, time-nutty things may not dazzle, but bore the
participants, judges, and audience.
Even at the middle school level, science fairs can be quite competitive
- The California Science Fair draws hundreds of projects at that grade
level (Grade 6-9) selected from fairs at the county level, which in turn
draw from school fairs.
The standard of judging is quite rigorous - a "demo" won't generally be
competitive at the state level, although it could make it through the
county level - depending on the county.
It may be best to relate to more hands-on, everyday experience and
observations of "normal" people. I like the suggestions about GPS and
stroboscopic and lasery stuff, where one can maybe appreciate how modern
everyday things work (like GPS, or how it's possible to talk to or send
a picture to anyone in the world on your cell phone, and how these could
not happen without precise time), or something visual and physical.
Virtually all science fairs prohibit lasers in a display - too many "bad
things" happening with remarkably high powered lasers available online.
You'll need to show it cannot be operated, or that it cannot present a
hazard (i.e. if it's built into a piece of hardware that cannot be
modified on site to allow exposure).
Even laser pointers are not allowed (because how is the display review
committee to know whether it's 1 mW or 100 mW)
Some of the props should be "ordinary" things, like the a cell phone or
GPS receiver, for example. Lasers are always good as long as there's a
direct visual component to the observation. Strobe type stuff is
particularly easy, because it's doable with mechanical and acoustical
props, and signal measurement times are in reach of common lab equipment
like generators, scopes, and counters, and of course there's a big
visual experience component.
Small power visible lasers are common nowadays, so easy to use. Strobe
lights are fairly common too, but maybe not so much as the other items.
You can build (or buy) quite a nice strobe light nowadays using
high-powered LEDs - the kind used for replacing incandescent and other
illumination. This is quite easy and much safer than dealing with flash
tubes, and is much more versatile. In fact, maybe this could even be a
science fair project. The time element is in the stroboscopic effects
and ability to slow or freeze apparent motion - almost everyone has
observed this and can relate.
A strobe is a fine display, and there's probably interesting time-nuts
kinds of experiments one can do using it - the combination of a short
duration strobe with a modern cellphone camera running at, say, 240 fps,
might be a good way to instrumentally measure a mechanical vibration.
But you need to have some set of experiments designed to confirm or
reject a hypothesis. You could have a hypothesis about synchronization
of vibrating rods on a common base, for instance.
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