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

On Wed, Feb 8, 2012 at 5:44 PM, Jim Lux jimlux@earthlink.net wrote:

--

Chris Albertson
Redondo Beach, California

Hi guys

My 2 cents...from first person experience ;-) (although this doesn't have
much to do with frequency standard-related science fair projects...)

I am actually a high school junior in one of Dallas/Ft Worth, Texas's,
suburbs, and I have been competing in ISEF science fairs for the last 3
years.

and can justify why this new method is better than mainstream methods.
Besides that, it is almost like a "marketing fair" since the presentation
style also plays a huge role.  In my opinion, high school ISEF science fair
these days is not about "hey look at what I made", but its more like "how
can it be done better and why should it replace mainstream technology".

My project last year was essentially building a general purpose compact
X-band radar system capable of distance and speed measurements.  My major
application was its use as "no-physical-contact biomedical instruments".  I
got 2nd place at regionals and didnt advance any farther than state.  In
retrospect, I believe my weaknesses back then were because radars are
nothing new; I just presented a new application and I feel like I could've
presented my project better towards the judges.  I believe the live demo of
a part of the radar, showing how professionally made it was (custom PCBs,
etc), and the detailed documentation binder were a huge plus to my project.

This year, I'm working on making a monolithic CMOS THz imaging array with
built-in signal processing integrated circuit.  (Just in case you're
wondering, my I'm employeed at the TxACE center at UTD as a intern).  My
job is to basically design on the transistor level and integrate the signal
processing circuit into the CMOS THz imaging array.  At the end, I plan to
use this project and compete in STS, Siemens, and ISEF.  Unlike my last
year's project, monolithic THz imaging arrays with on-chip signal
processing is something relatively new.

Why is a teenager (me) doing on this list?  Because I have a passion for
electronics, especially analog and RF ever since when I was very young.  I
love what I'm doing and I dont plan on stopping.

Ok I'll stop rambling now...sorry for the long email guys...

Ray Xu
KF5LJO

On Wed, Feb 8, 2012 at 8:03 PM, Chris Albertson
albertson.chris@gmail.comwrote:

--

73, Ray Xu
KF5LJO

On 2/8/12 6:03 PM, Chris Albertson wrote:

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 2/8/12 7:37 PM, Ray Xu wrote:

You bet. I am an ISEF engineering judge, and you are exactly right.
You need to know your field well enough to be able to explain why what
you are doing is different, and why there's at least a chance of it
being better.

At the top levels, it has never been "look what I made" (the perjorative
term is "baking soda volcano").

I don't know that presentation style is super important, at least at
ISEF: there are entries from all around the world, from places with all
manner of cultural styles and technical display proficiency. Most
notably, a lot of the entrants aren't speaking English and are using a
translator of variable quality (i.e. they may be able to translate Urdu
and English, but odds are, they aren't an engineer)

What the judges look for is

• good explanation of what you did and why you did it  - getting back to
  the idea of picking a good topic that's novel (where time-nuts can help,
  eh?  research on background doesn't have to all be literature searches..
  asking experts is good)
• responding to questions as asked - We all get trained (or have
  experience and share notes) on "stopping the elevator pitch"
• being able to answer obscure details about what you did (to root out
  the "third assistant bottle washer in professor so-and-so's lab" and the
  "kit builder")
• it being YOUR project (again, working as a team member in a university
  lab isn't going to be a winner for the fair.. good in real life, not
  good for competition)

Yes.. you basically built a measurement instrument that already existed.
If that had been incidental to your application, and you focused on
the novelty of the application (e.g. detecting sleep apnea or something
like that) it might have done better.

Or, if your radar was somehow novel in design (e.g. you didn't use a
gunnplexer or DRO based door opening radar as the base, and it wasn't a
simple FMCW homodyne)

I believe the live demo of

Yes and no.  live demo is always good (because it shows YOU did it), and
face it, it's SHOWTIME

detailed documentation is good (shows good work practice, and if the
judge picks a page at random and asks about it, and you can answer.
I've judged software projects and done this, and the person had ZERO
clue about what the module I was doing did and why it was there.)

Professionally made, maybe, maybe not. Depends on the context and what
resources you had available to you.  I saw an amazing project last year
that was literally built from scrap electronics the guys had scrounged
at the junkyard in their third world country. I've never seen so many
different kinds of connectors and ancient phenolic PC boards repurposed
in my life.  But the darn thing worked and did what they wanted.  They
got good marks on ingenuity and use of resources.  (Their project topic
wasn't all that great, unfortunately..)

If you are living in Silicon Valley, and you show up with homemade PC
boards or deadbug style construction, and you explained why that was the
choice you made, rather than sending it out to any of a zillion fab
houses around your house, that would be fine.

There's an awful lot of really disappointed entrants who have access to
a top-notch lab, have gorgeous printouts and graphs, but did something
mundane and repetitious.  This is really common in the biomed/molecular
bio area, because it's sexy, and it's not too hard to get hooked up with
someone with good lab facilities, but the field is moving so fast that
you run the risk of doing what labs pay a technician $15/hr to do.  The
student gets so caught up in the miracle of doing PCR and sequencing and
stuff that they don't wind up doing any real science.

I assume you've seen the new IEEE transactions on THz stuff edited by
Peter Siegel?  If you haven't, you can be sure some of the judges have.
(although I won't be judging your project if I recognize it)  Be careful
about the "it has to be all your project to win" thing.

On Wed, 8 Feb 2012 21:37:36 -0600
Ray Xu rayxu123@gmail.com wrote:

[...]

Wow... I'm... astonished...

Back about 15 years ago, a friend an i build a calculator based on
an embedded version of the 80186... and we were the big shots at
our high school... Now studendts build THz imaging arrays?

I guess, in 10 or 20 years, students will be building warp drives... ^^'

Well.. back to topic... I'd very much like to see the documentation
of your projects. Why? Because i'd like to learn from others and and
your projects seem very interesting :-)

			Attila Kinali

--
Why does it take years to find the answers to
the questions one should have asked long ago?

Hi Jim

Thank you for your reply, especially for your input on how science fair is
judged.  I've saved your reply and I'll be sure to read over it again
before regional competition in a few weeks!

No I have not done any research into Peter Siegel's work...Thanks for
pointing that out to me.  Speaking of IEEE, I should start reading over the
stuff on there since I now have access to it through UTD...

Thanks
Ray Xu

On Wed, Feb 8, 2012 at 10:23 PM, Jim Lux jimlux@earthlink.net wrote:

--

73, Ray Xu
KF5LJO

Hi Jim:

Check out:
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/clifford_stoll_on_everything.html

Here's part of an email from Clifford:
"Oh, the speed of light?

For detectors, I use two fast-response photodiodes and feed their outputs into opamps.

The experiment uses one cheap laserpointer (they cost a buck or two on ebay - I buy 25 at once, and then select the
ones with the fastest switching rate.)

The laser pointer is fed by a signal generator (I use an HP 3312A); the square wave output connects to the laser
pointer with a pair of clipleads.  I start with the laser switching about once a second, to show the kids that it really
is turning on and off.  THen I boost the speed to a few hertz, then tens, and hundreds of hertz.  Eventually, I get it
switching on/off at 2 to 5 MHz.

I aim this switched laser beam at a distant mirror (across the room - maybe 10 or 15 meters away).  Coming back along
almost the same path, this long-path beam then hits a lens which focuses the beam onto one photodiode.  The photodiode
feeds its pulses into an opamp, and then into the bottom trace of a dual trace 100MHz oscilloscope.

I then create a short-path beam using a beamsplitter that's right next to the laserpointer.  I use a piece of
microscope slide cover-slide for the beamsplitter.  A few inches from the beamsplitter I set the short-path photodiode,
which goes through the 2nd opamp and into the upper beam of the squigglescope.

There'll be a time delay in the arrival of the long-path beam; I get the students to measure this time difference.
Then we measure the path lenght difference with a tape measure, do a division, and out pops the local speed of light.

Lots of gotcha's ... for instance, I make sure that I trigger the oscilloscope on the output of the function
generator.  Also, alignment is very difficult, and requires rock-solid furniture (seldom found in classrooms).

It's a fun project with high school students, because we spend a long time afterwards discussing errors and problems
in the system ... typically, we measure things about 20 or 30 percent off.  The main source of error turns out to be
mismatched responses in the two photodiode/opamps.

Have Fun,

Brooke Clarke
http://www.PRC68.com
http://www.end2partygovernment.com/Brooke4Congress.html

Jim Lux wrote:

Do not be misled by the conventional theory that scientists develop a
theory
and then do an experiment to prove it.
This theory was dreamed up by some vertical thinker who was incapable
of any scientific progress. It has been reinforced by commentators who
reconstruct the path of discovery after the event, omitting any
"unsuccessful"
workers or work from the process as being non-contributors to the
discovery.
As one who has spent his career in (non-worldshattering) research,
new science
comes from several directions.
First is just plain hard work, exploring every aspect of anything
anywhere in an area.
This involves doing the experiment first and developing a theory that
fits the results.
Then you do another experiment to test the theory.
One of the signs that you look for is some discrepancy in the
conventional model.
Some experimental result that smells suspicious.
You never know what you might find and what it might mean or be
useful for.
Directed research is not research but engineering.
Next is when the time has come for an idea. When the time has come,
it will not
be long before some one tries the combination that leads to discovery.
Equipment and technology is a driver. Forty years ago my research chief
suggested that these new lasers may be useful so we should buy one.
That lead to several steps forward and more than one commercial
instrument.
Research can be driven by looking for what we do not know. This is
looking for a question that has an uncertain answer.
But research is definitely not developing a hypothesis and then
proving it.
This must surely have held back progress enormously as bright new
students get
discouraged by the impossible idea of developing hypothesis about
something
that has not yet even been thought about.
Maxwell did not hypothesise about radio waves. He just followed his
genius nose
developing one mathematical expression from another. In this case the
time had not come,
it took four other scientists years to discover what he had done.
cheers,
Neville Michie

On 10/02/2012, at 3:23 AM, Chris Albertson wrote:

On Thu, Feb 9, 2012 at 2:04 PM, Neville Michie namichie@gmail.com wrote:

Yes many people wear two hats.

I've worked on (a small part of) a launch system that sent a couple
spacecraft to Mars.  I'm NOT doing science when I  do that I'm
refining technology.  Later I think about how it is that humans and
other higher animals can relate what they see to what they hear and
make diagrams to explain a theory, that is science.

So , yes people can do many things and switch tracks hour by hour.
Sometimes they can in effect kill two birds with one stone.  But one
should not confuse building a ground penetrating radar with using one
to collect data to verify (or not) a theory.  Many times the same
person both builds and uses the radar so the fields have always been
tightly coupled, advances in engineering enable advances in science
that feed back to advances in engineering.  But even if tightly
coupled they are not the same thing.  One gives us better "stuff" and
the other gives us better understanding of nature.

--

Chris Albertson
Redondo Beach, California

On 2/9/12 8:23 AM, Chris Albertson wrote:

It's the "international science and engineering fair", so both kinds
show up.

The line between applied science and engineering is pretty fuzzy.

Is a verification of theoretical coupling between pendulums a science
question or engineering question?  What about developing a better model
to remove tidal effects on the pendulum? A lot of modern science is
coming up with ever more precise and descriptive models, particularly if
the model is not purely phenomenological, but is based on the underlying
physics.

But even for engineering, there has to be significant "scientific
method" applied.  Research in the field to understand the state of the
art.  Formulation of a design/plan, and the expected performance of the
device (aka "the hypothesis"), quantitative tests, etc.

Distinguish between "craftsmanship" and "engineering".. Even in the
engineering categories, a mouse trap wouldn't necessarily do very well
unless it there was something novel about it AND there were decent
predictions of performance ahead of time that could be tested by the
thing that gets built.

Lots of "I built a robot" kinds of projects that don't do well, even if
well constructed.  "I built a robot that climbs trees using a technique
nobody has ever used before" would do better.  "I built a robot that
climbs trees using a method that improves on how monkeys climb trees"
might do even better, depending.

Yes, a fun project, and a fine physics lab exercise.  But not a good
science fair project because it doesn't meet the "originality" bar.

This is something that I confess I had a hard time figuring out what
that meant when I was entering science fairs... as it happened, my
projects were original (reviewed in retrospect), but I couldn't figure
out how you'd evaluate it at the time.

In general, if the general idea for a project came from a published list
or book, that would be ok. But if the method of attacking the problem
also came from a book or the web, that wouldn't.

So a good topic to prompt projects would be "Measure the speed of light
in a novel way".

If you were to do Roemer's technique from the 17th century, but do it in
a clever way (webcams, telescopes, etc.) I think that would do ok in the
junior division at least.  (i.e. removing the human measurement element
is a good experimental refinement on the basic technique).

Or if you were to use some other extra terrestrial event as the
predictable time hack at a varying distance.

Here's a wild one.. Set up  detectors some distance apart where an
Iridium Flash will be visible (http://www.heavens-above.com/)  The flash
comes from the satellite, and the path length to the two detectors will
be different, so you will see the pulse at a different time.  By knowing
the distance between the detectors and the angular displacement of the
image with reference to something, you could figure out the distance to
the satellite, and therefore, the difference in propagation distance
between satellite and each sensor.

But these wouldn't hack it in Senior division.

On 2/9/12 7:19 AM, Brooke Clarke wrote:

On 2/9/12 4:00 PM, Bill Hawkins wrote:

I'd differ here.  My contention is that (creative) engineers are
fundamentally lazy.. they want to reduce the effort to accomplish
something.  Imagine people who have been wading across a river for
centuries.. an engineer says, "there must be a better way", and invents
a bridge.

Although that's really invention.
Engineering is also the effective use of knowledge to predict future
behavior.  A craftsman might use a particular size piece of stone or
steel because that's tradition, or because they have a "feel" for it. An
engineer would use it because they can calculate the loads, they know
the material properties, so they are making the choice based on
quantitative models and theory.

However, engineers tend to be focused more on the end result or process:
the how, rather than the why.  They're interested in why, but often
that's because that lets them do a better how.

Scientists tend to be focused on understanding the why.

But, as mentioned, when you get to applied science.. Is the guy
measuring fission cross sections in a critical assembly doing basic
physics to understand chain reactions or is he building a bomb or
reactor, for which he needs to understand chain reactions?

There's a reputational thing too.. Scientists are, in some ways,
considered higher class than engineers.  I think this is a holdover from
18th and 19th class distinction: gentleman scientist vs tradesman
engineer.  An awful lot of what Lord Rayleigh did was engineering,
although I'll bet that most biographies describe him as a scientist.

The whole, "if it has practical value, it's trade", thing:  like amateur
sports being somehow "better" than doing it for money.

There is a notable distinction here at work (NASA/JPL) in scientists vs
engineers, but it's not so much about background or motivations, but in
time scale of concern.

Consider a scientist for a space probe to investigate something: Mars.
They've got these questions about Mars that they've had for years, and
they've worked for years and years to get a mission funded, to get the
data they need to answer their question, and they expect to spend the
rest of their life working on that data.

The engineers designing and building and operating that probe, on the
other hand, came to the party fairly late.  They were working on some
other spacecraft perhaps, but now they're designing and building the
instruments or infrastructure to make the measurement.  They get it
built, launch it, and then, they're off to make the next space probe or
instrument.  Not that they aren't interested in what they built, or the
data it will return, but nobody is willing to pay them to do that. (and,
in a utilitarian sense, that's not an effective use of their hard won
and unique skill set).

The other distinction is the amount of personal investment in the whole
thing.  Typically, the probe is NOT the engineer's life work. If it
blows up on the launch pad, they'll be disappointed, but life goes on.
For the scientist, though, this is a catastrophic life disaster.  The
culmination of their every hope and dream for the past decades has just
vanished in a ball of fire.

Of course, the distinction is not as hard as all that... plenty of
engineers work for decades on a particular instrument or spacecraft and
are pretty invested in it.  However, I still think that the reaction to
the loss of the spacecraft is different:  the engineer regrets the loss
of the invested time and knowledge, and perhaps the specialized
knowledge for which there is no use now which was sort difficult to
acquire.  But the scientist finds that the burning question which has
motivated them for years will likely never be answered, or worse, from a
personal pride standpoint, will be answered by someone else.

(I say all this as a Principal Investigator on a payload that will
hopefully NOT disappear in a ball of fire in June)

On Thu, Feb 9, 2012 at 4:09 PM, Jim Lux jimlux@earthlink.net wrote:

The line is still clear.  Building a better pendulum is engineering,
Understanding the effect of a gravity gradient is science.  The test
is if you get a better widget or you improves your knowledge of
nature.  The two can be very tightly coupled and it is likey you can't
understand pendulums without also building pendulums.

The way to untangle it is to see that the end-product of science is
not a new shiny widget but is the knowledge one needs to build the
widget.

The '56 nobel prize was for "researches on semiconductors and
discovery of the transistor effect".  Not for building a transistor.
But I'm sure they had to build many transistors to understand the
effect.

--

Chris Albertson
Redondo Beach, California