Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

Louise wrote:I would rather answer 500 questions and know you understand the project, than answer 3 and have you be confused. If I ever seemed cross about answering questions, it was only because I was unhappy that I could not answer your questions well enough that you understood!
Louise

It's harder to explain things than to know them. And even harder for us, sometimes, to explain them to elementary, junior high school and high school students. My entire teaching experience is teaching post-graduates (people all who have doctoral degrees). So I often have to catch myself and think about how what I say sounds. And Louise, being a post-doc herself, probably spends her classroom time teaching graduate and/or college students.

Back to the topic at hand, Alaa1991, I was referring to a program that can try to fit the data to a curve or type of curve, not a program relating the index of refraction to the sugar concentration.

I read through the pdf file for the RI-DS, and it is interesting. It could give you theoretical values to compare your experimental ones against. But you would need to know the composition of what you are measuring (which you do know for the sucrose/water mixtures, but not for things like Diet Coke (I think the exact proportions of high fructose corn syrup, and sucrose are a closely guarded trade secret.) I also don't see a link to download the program, so I'm not sure how you'd get it (? call the Corn Refiners Association)

I can't remember what computer program I used to use to do the curve fitting (perhaps I just did it manually through Excel.) Louise, do you know of one off hand?

I think I got the graph. Line Graph

What I did was, on the x axis I have the following:

Distilled water, 5g/100mL, 10g/ 100mL, 20g/100mL, 25g/100mL, 30g/100mL

y axis includes
1.334, 1.342, 1.345, 1.351, 1.358, 1.366, 1.381

The Graph is a curve, try it and see whether this is how it is to look.
I also did anothe graph, a bar graph, which includes the diet coke and coke.
Is that fine?

Lots of programs can do cureve fitting. Systat, Minitab, R, S-Plus, Origin etc. For a cheap way to do some basic curve fiitting you can use the regression features of the TI-83+ calculator. If you are intestested in doing so, let me know and I can walk you through it.

Terik Daly wrote:Lots of programs can do cureve fitting. Systat, Minitab, R, S-Plus, Origin etc. For a cheap way to do some basic curve fiitting you can use the regression features of the TI-83+ calculator. If you are intestested in doing so, let me know and I can walk you through it.

I did the curve fitting, and it is a second order polynomial. Since there isn't an obvious model (that I could find), I think it might be best to skip curve fitting.

Excel also can handle this type of data and is probably easier to find than Origin!

But, since the project is due tomorrow, I think what has been done is fine.

Louise

Louise wrote: I did the curve fitting, and it is a second order polynomial. Since there isn't an obvious model (that I could find), I think it might be best to skip curve fitting.

But, since the project is due tomorrow, I think what has been done is fine.

Louise

Seems very wise.

It is pushed to March 1. It is just the report. Display is still what I got to work on. I got a little bit of time.

I got it, I did just a simple line graph, don't think that having a curve graph is that significant, but intresting. I will give it a try.

Finally I finished my report.

I would like to thank all of you, and everyone who, Louise, Alan Lichtenstein, Terk, and Carig. I don't know what i would have done with out you help. It is such a very helpful website that can help student finish their science fair.
once again THANK YOU, I appericate all the effort that you all put to help all the students complete their science fair.

No problem. Helping people like you is what we are here for.

Good luck. It sounds like a nice project.

Alaa1991 wrote:It is pushed to March 1. It is just the report. Display is still what I got to work on. I got a little bit of time.

I got it, I did just a simple line graph, don't think that having a curve graph is that significant, but intresting. I will give it a try.

Finally I finished my report.

I would like to thank all of you, and everyone who, Louise, Alan Lichtenstein, Terk, and Carig. I don't know what i would have done with out you help. It is such a very helpful website that can help student finish their science fair.
once again THANK YOU, I appericate all the effort that you all put to help all the students complete their science fair.

We are glad to help! I hope your report got turned in and you can relax! Good luck on the presentation at the science fair, and be sure to tell us how it goes.

Louise

Thank you

I have competed in the Flint science Fair, and got 5th place. I learned alot from this project, without you prehaps I wouldn't have understood my idea

AGain Thanks to all those who helped.

I am also looking forward to doing another project.

Thank you

Alaa1991 wrote:Thank you

I have competed in the Flint science Fair, and got 5th place. I learned alot from this project, without you prehaps I wouldn't have understood my idea

AGain Thanks to all those who helped.

I am also looking forward to doing another project.

Thank you

5th place! Congrats! Glad we could help.

Louise

Congratulations.

Well done. Congrats!