lilac smashing experiment / science fairs generally

[ajschumacher]

https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2016/04/08/science-fair-2016-meet-next-generation-americas-innovators

https://www.youtube.com/user/GoogleScienceFair

science vs. (?) engineering?

[ajschumacher]

my flower experiment with instagram results starting here: https://www.instagram.com/p/BZe264unzDB/

[ajschumacher]

https://twitter.com/planarrowspace/status/1176623983732674560

Science fair project I would like to see: What is the effect of pressing the pedestrian button at neighborhood street lights?

[ajschumacher]

air pressure in an airplane: sample with closed continers (like a 20oz bottle or whatever) and then measure volume on the ground in a tube of water, etc.

[ajschumacher]

does paper really burn at Fahrenheit 451? could do this in an oven, yeah?

tweeted: https://twitter.com/planarrowspace/status/1282787932294778881

[ajschumacher]

Science fair project I would like to see: For a given volume filled with water and sand, how much is water and how much is sand? (Or: How much water can you add to sand? Or: How space-filling is sand, relative to water?)

https://twitter.com/planarrowspace/status/1283078122200600578

[ajschumacher]

maybe disproving things that are "obviously" false but have been believed?

like: taste regions on the tongue (could do an experiment?)

like: gum stays in your stomach for seven years (just thought experiment?)

inspired by: http://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=3592

[ajschumacher]

measurement like "how Hipparchus of Nicaea felt when he discovered he could figure out the height of a pyramid from its shadow on the ground, without actually climbing the pyramid. It was a clear victory of mind over matter." (The Book of Why, page 232)

[ajschumacher]

David Mumford notes: "Almost everyone has access to to open bodies of water or flat plains where the horizon is visible. They should realize that they can easily measure the size of the earth, as I showed my class at Brown."

https://www.dam.brown.edu/people/mumford/beyond/education.html

[ajschumacher]

"What Mathematics Serves the Majority of 21st Century American Students?" by Heather Dallas and David Mumford https://dam.brown.edu/people/mumford/beyond/papers/CurtisArticleRev10-6.pdf

Fun stuff, including an idea for measuring how far up clouds are!

[ajschumacher]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haidao_Suanjing (The Sea Island Mathematical Manual) has some cool stuff:

• Survey of sea island
• Height of a hill top pine tree
• The size of a square city wall viewed afar
• The depth of a ravine (using hence-forward cross-bars)
• The height of a building on a plain seen from a hill
• The breadth of a river-mouth seen from a distance on land
• The depth of a transparent pool
• The width of a river as seen from a hill
• The size of a city seen from a mountain

[ajschumacher]

Measurement should really be allowed in a science fair... You don't always need a process hypothesis, and if you're curious about how big something is (etc.) you don't need to hypothesize a guess about how big it is, really... I mean you can, and maybe that's helpful, but you don't need to, and you don't measure to "confirm or deny" your guess.

[ajschumacher]

fun stuff on measuring: https://www.johndcook.com/blog/2020/09/26/sagging-tape-measure/

[ajschumacher]

tests of ESP/psychokinetics ("can I influence how often I flip heads?")

[ajschumacher]

replicate some classic experiment like e.g. https://planspace.org/20201111-cattell_didnt_say_we_process_words_faster_than_pictures/

[ajschumacher]

I took some ice from a frozen lake and left it on the shore. The next day the lake had thawed but the ice on the shore was still frozen.

Why is that? Initially I thought maybe the motion of the water in the lake was important, breaking ice into pieces. It could also be that air temperature was lower than water temperature. I suspect the most significant factor is the differing heat conductance of air and water. Air is a decent insulator, whereas water will transfer heat fairly well. (Erica points out also that thawing thing like frozen fish etc. goes faster in water than in air.)

So a fun experiment would be to compare how long it takes to melt some ice in air versus in water. (At room temperature.)

Observation could be aided by video recording. Time-lapse might be fun.

[ajschumacher]

The "personal equation" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_equation is a neat idea around measurement, and could be the topic of some investigation: can you quantify differences in how different people measure things?

https://collections.museumsvictoria.com.au/articles/1635

Science in Context Volume 2 issue 1 1988 [doi 10.1017_s026988970000051x] Schaffer, Simon -- Astronomers Mark Time- Discipline and the Personal Equation.pdf

"Quantification is not a self-evident nor inevitable process in science's history, but possesses a remarkable cultural history of its own."

[ajschumacher]

https://pioreactor.com/

[ajschumacher]

When (what time) does dew form? Throughout the night, or just at dawn?

[ajschumacher]

When putting laundry away (from bin to closet) does it take longer to do the last N inches of laundry? Is there compression of lower laundry by higher laundry? Do more time-consuming pieces (underwear, socks) tend to "sink to the bottom"?

More generally: how long does it take people to put laundry away? Is there a lot of variety?

originally I called this idea "the laundry illusion" because I felt like progress was slowing down the longer I did it...

[ajschumacher]

This show has Stephen Hawking getting people to do experiments, I guess? https://www.pbs.org/show/genius-stephen-hawking/

[ajschumacher]

year one: replication fair year two: open problem fair? new work fair? science fair?

engineering fair?

[ajschumacher]

How many balloons to lift a person? Pennies?

https://www.macinstruments.com/blog/what-is-the-density-of-air-at-stp/

density of air is 1.225 kg/m^3!?!? that seems way denser than I thought!

[ajschumacher]

try to measure where plants get their mass from? soil / water / air?

[ajschumacher]

measurement fair? connect to epistemology?

[ajschumacher]

https://www.quantamagazine.org/does-hot-water-freeze-faster-than-cold-physicists-keep-asking-20220629/

[ajschumacher]

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/08/opinion/truth-flossing-cold-medicine.html

[ajschumacher]

Where Do Trees Get Their Mass? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KZb2_vcNTg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Baptist_van_Helmont#The_Willow_tree_experiment so cool!