The Thing Posted January 8, 2006 Posted January 8, 2006 OMG OMG! I have a science fair project due in about 3 days . Haven't even started. I need a topic, bad. The provincial fair is not till April and I have a topic for THAT. HOWEVER, our teacher wants us to hand in our project in JANUARY because our school's semester based and this semester is over in about a month. The project I'm doing for April is too immensely complicated for me to pull off in less than 3 days and have all the materials and display done. So it's time for a desperate alternative. I'm 15 years old, Grade 10, able to spend about 100 to 200 bucks. I am interested in computers, math, engineering, physics, and chemistry. Our teacher wants a good project and she's a hard marker, so please, is there a topic that's seemingly frightening and impressive but easy to do in 2 or 3 days? Thanks a lot! I'm desperate.
cosine Posted January 8, 2006 Posted January 8, 2006 Try to do a history of the use Euclid's Elements through the past century and compare it with mathematics literacy in the corresponding years (by looking up people who graduated with math or science degrees, or other methods if possible). Its a popular hypothesis that Euclid's Elements leads to a better understanding of math. If you could find a correlation, someone might say something.
The Thing Posted January 8, 2006 Author Posted January 8, 2006 Thanks, but I need the results of the experiment in about 2 days. Oh yea, it should be an experiment or an innovation.
clarisse Posted January 8, 2006 Posted January 8, 2006 You could investigate the effect of different flame retardant chemicals on different types of clothing material. You could use old tee shirts and pants with say different percentage composition of cotton. Some flame retardants include borax, boric acid, etc... its an easy experiment to do and if you enjoy burning things then you won't get bored... the only probem might be to get different flame retardants
The Thing Posted January 9, 2006 Author Posted January 9, 2006 I've just saw an article online about finding a recursive expression for pi through a formula of centripetal force. It doesn't tell you how though! Anyone's ever heard of this?
rakuenso Posted January 9, 2006 Posted January 9, 2006 trying to sound impressive never gets you anywhere
The Thing Posted January 9, 2006 Author Posted January 9, 2006 Huh? Oh, no, this won't be my REAL science fair. It's just something to show to the teacher, so I actually HAVE something and not absolutely flunk the entire thing. The teacher, well, from my experiences with her, likes impressive sounding titles. I've worked with the teacher enough to know that she will DEFINITELY give anyone a good mark if the topic's impressive enough. Okay, with the time diminishing fast and furious, I've gotten an idea: gathering the existing methods to calculate pi and testing their efficiencies, as well as devising my own method using very simple geometry and trigonometry and a limit when x approaches infinity and testing IT.
1veedo Posted January 9, 2006 Posted January 9, 2006 Look for science fairs people have done in the past.
cosine Posted January 9, 2006 Posted January 9, 2006 Huh? Oh' date=' no, this won't be my REAL science fair. It's just something to show to the teacher, so I actually HAVE something and not absolutely flunk the entire thing. The teacher, well, from my experiences with her, likes impressive sounding titles. I've worked with the teacher enough to know that she will DEFINITELY give anyone a good mark if the topic's impressive enough.Okay, with the time diminishing fast and furious, I've gotten an idea: gathering the existing methods to calculate pi and testing their efficiencies, as well as devising my own method using very simple geometry and trigonometry and a limit when x approaches infinity and testing IT.[/quote'] Its a nice idea, especially if you like computer programming. But just to let you know that the efficiency and convergences of different methods have been laid out already.
The Thing Posted January 10, 2006 Author Posted January 10, 2006 Thanks cosine. Incidentally, I wrote a very simple program just to show how one can calculate pi simply by using a polygon. No it's not Archimedes's way, I think its simpler. All it requires is a knowledge of the sine law. Unfortunately, the programming language, VB, uses floating point decimals to store my large data and as the number of sides a polygon has approaches the trillions, it becomes too inaccurate. Cosine, where can I find info about the convergence and the efficiency comparisons of different methods?
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