Re: [TCML] Beginning Tesla Design

[jimlux <jimlux@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

mrapol@xxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> Why not build your own capacitors? They will be cheap, should work fine, 
> and for a science fair it would carry a lot more cachet to have an array 
> of caps you made yourself. They won't be as efficient as factory-made 
> caps, but for a demonstration device, homemade has many advantages.
>
> PBT

I would respectfully disagree... As a judge, you look for the fact that 
the experimenter as adequately reviewed the literature, and the 
literature is pretty clear that home built caps are inferior, unless you 
are so horribly cost constrained that beer bottle caps are all you can do.

A judge wants to see something other than just craftsmanship and toil 
(although that's important too), what they really want to see is that 
the exhibitor understands the "scientific method"  The judging rubric is 
usually set up to allocate certain numbers of points to various aspects 
of the project.  Frankly, engineering projects, particularly those that 
are basically a construction project, have a hard time fitting into the 
evaluation mold.  They want to see things like "repeated trials" "does 
the experiment have a control group", etc.

Now, you could do an experimental project on capacitor construction, but 
it would entail building many sets of capacitors, predicting their 
behavior, and then testing them.


You need:
Research - what's been done before, what's already known
The problem - what are you trying to find out (which should be something 
that isn't answerable from the research)
Experimental Design - what are you actually going to do (and you need to 
explain why what you're doing will help answer the problem)
Hypothesis or Prediction - based on the research (what other people did, 
laws of physics) what you think is going to happen.  For TCs this is 
easy... Maxwell's laws tell all.

Lots of experimental runs, with systematic variation of whatever the 
parameter is, and more than one try at each value

Data ANalysis - how much uncertainty is in the measurements?  How does 
that compare to the changes you saw in response to the change in 
parameter?  Is the change smaller than the measurement uncertainty?

Conclusion - the wrap up... the answer to the problem.


_______________________________________________
Tesla mailing list
Tesla@xxxxxxxxxx
http://www.pupman.com/mailman/listinfo/tesla