Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

My son is trying to base his science fair project on the effectiveness of eyeblack for athletes. He is having a hard time finding the appropriate way to measure the sun glare. He's seen a suggestion for using a flashlight and a light meter, but no real instructions how to do it. Any suggestions or direction you can provide would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

Hello there!

This is a really interesting idea for a project! I found some information from when the mythbusters did an episode testing eyeblack with a light meter. I wanted to post this link for you to see if it helped; however, I am looking for another expert to come along with some more ideas to comment and help.

Link: http://www.multibriefs.com/briefs/exclu ... 8yUo5MrJBx

Good Luck!

I was wondering if you were able to find any other guidance of how to measure sun glare/light reflection. Unfortunately, we haven't been able to view the actual Mythbusters episode so we can't tell how they actually did the experiment. Thanks.

Hello,

Have you found anything recently about how you might want to conduct your experiment? After a quick Google search, I have found that many of these studies have been previously performed:

http://scholars.unh.edu/cgi/viewcontent ... quiry_2005

I would suggest that there could be an alternate way to measure eye black effectiveness in a similar way as in the study I cited. You could use a chart and have participants read until they could not determine the letters. In this way, you can have two groups (one with eye black and one without) whereby you can score how far down the charts each group can go on average.

Let us know and we will try to help you further.

Best,
Pharma