It’s About Time

New York State Coaches Clinic

October 10, 2008Patricia Sherman

Parameters

• Two team members may bring a 3 ring binder with information from any source to use during both parts of the competition.

• They may bring with them writing utensils, stopwatches, water, sand, tools, and other supplies needed to set up, calibrate, and operate their device

• Clean up materials must also be available.

Provided

• The event supervisor will supply– All Formula– Constants,– Basic equations – Scratch paper

• Students must build their own device able to tell time from 10 seconds to 300 seconds

• Commercial counters, timepieces or parts of either are prohibited.

• It may not use any electrical components or chemical reactions.

• It must be made to control spillage.

Construction

Impounding• Only one device may be impounded• All components needed to operate the

device including sand and water must be supplied by the students.

• At impound everything must be able to fit into an 80 cm cube (except cleanup supplies, tools, and stopwatches

• It must be able to be moved by the two team members.

competition

• There will be five time trials with different limits.• Students will have 5 minutes to set up and

calibrate their device.• The judge will give a verbal notification that the

trial is about to start and the timing will be started and stopped with the sounding of a tone or beep.

• Teams will have one minute to record the time from their device to the nearest 0.1 second and prepare for the next trial.

Written test

• Teams will be given approximately 20 minutes to complete a written test.

• Questions may be multiple -choice, true-false, completion, or problem solving (involving calculations)

Scoring

• Students start each time trial with 10 points and have points deducted for each error

• Trial 1 10 - 30 s 0.4 pts per 0.1 s• Trial 2 30 - 90 s 0.3 pts per 0.1 s• Trial 3 90 - 180 s 0.2 pts per 0.1 s• Trial 4 180 -300 s 0.1 pts per 0.1 s• Trial 5 any of the above same as 4

Part II Scoring

• The written test will be 50% of the total.

• The total scores from part one and part two minus penalties will determine the winner (highest score).

• Ties will be broken by the highest score from time trial 5, second tie breaker is from a designated question on the test.

Problems

• Any device operated in an unsafe manner will receive no points for part I.

• Any splashes, spills , or falls on a table or floor will be assessed a penalty of up to 10 points.

• A team that does not clean up thoroughly will be assessed a penaled of 15 points.

What to StudyHistory of timeWhat is time based on?Newtonian timePeriodicity of planetary and other celestial

movementsWhat is a second based on?Phrases using time (“Time is money” “A stitch in

time saves nine”, “Time and tide waits for no man” etc)

Directional time (except for the Second law of thermodynamics)

• Chronometry (clocks and calendars)• History of Calendar - Julian, Gregorian• History of measurement - horology - sundial,

water clocks, hourglasses, incense candles, mechanical clocks, orrerys

• Longitude and latitude - chronometer, time zones

• Atomic clocks, GPS• Sidereal vs solar time• Religion, philosophy, mythology, psychlogy• Spacetime continuum• Galilean vs Lorentzian transformations• Relativity, Big Bang, Hawking, LOTS MORE