Detector Building C

[MBosons]

For "provide their own Calibration Thermometer for calibration and testing", what kind of thermometers are people using? Will a typical food thermometer be sufficiently accurate? Also, what kind of calibration can be done at event time? Is there an expectation that our built thermometers will be off by some certain amount? And then calibration means setting some +/- that should be added/subtracted from the computed temperature?

Did anyone answer the question about what bringing our own digital calibration thermometer means?

[MTV<=>Operator]

I'm using 5 different equations in my program (which is legal according to the FAQ). How would I show this in my design log? Do I just show a scatter plot and scatter plot with equation overlay for all 5 equations?

[lindsmaurer]

I'm using 5 different equations in my program (which is legal according to the FAQ). How would I show this in my design log? Do I just show a scatter plot and scatter plot with equation overlay for all 5 equations?

depending on what graphing tool you’re using you should be able to make it a piecewise function

[MTV<=>Operator]

For the device test, are you allowed to see the temperature on the actual thermometer? I know you can tell the supervisor when you want them to record temperatures. At YUSO they let me see the temp on both the thermometer and my device so I assumed this would be allowed at the regional, but it wasn't. They only let me see the temp on my device, and this ended up bringing my accuracy score down from around 55+ in testing to 50.

[Umaroth]

For the device test, are you allowed to see the temperature on the actual thermometer? I know you can tell the supervisor when you want them to record temperatures. At YUSO they let me see the temp on both the thermometer and my device so I assumed this would be allowed at the regional, but it wasn't. They only let me see the temp on my device, and this ended up bringing my accuracy score down from around 55+ in testing to 50.

Rules say nothing about it. The logical one is for the reading to be blind so you can't game the system by waiting until they match, but not all tournaments are doing that. Yet another oversight by the rules.

[LIPX3]

For the device test, are you allowed to see the temperature on the actual thermometer? I know you can tell the supervisor when you want them to record temperatures. At YUSO they let me see the temp on both the thermometer and my device so I assumed this would be allowed at the regional, but it wasn't. They only let me see the temp on my device, and this ended up bringing my accuracy score down from around 55+ in testing to 50.

Rules say nothing about it. The logical one is for the reading to be blind so you can't game the system by waiting until they match, but not all tournaments are doing that. Yet another oversight by the rules.

I've seen both setups. A clarifcation on this would be quite useful.

[lindsmaurer]

The ES at Solon (who is the NES) didn’t let us see the temperature reading on our calibration thermometer, and those readings were taken immediately after we read out what our device said when we thought it was ready

[sciencegirl03]

I have seen both setups at invitationals. In my opinion, we should not be able to see the thermometers reading as you could read out yours when they are close to matching. At Solon, we could not see the thermometer reading and since it was the Nats ES, I expect it should be that way in the future.

[Tekguy]

Does anyone have any good ideas for how to waterproof a thermistor? For some reason, when we cover ours with liquid electrical tape, and clear nail polish, they read very inaccurately. When we put the bare thermistor into water, with no waterproofing whatsoever, it reads perfectly accurately. We are using a TMP36.

[LIPX3]

I have seen both setups at invitationals. In my opinion, we should not be able to see the thermometers reading as you could read out yours when they are close to matching. At Solon, we could not see the thermometer reading and since it was the Nats ES, I expect it should be that way in the future.

What you could do is have your temperature be increasing at a constant rate, ie 0.1 degree every 2 seconds, and then call it at the point in time where the temperatures are close.