THE BATTERY TEST
My all-time favorite experiment was by a kid who compared the per minute cost of Brand X batteries -- the un-advertized cheapest batteries on the shelf in local stores --
... to the per minute cost of heavily-marketed batteries like the one which made made the Energizer battery go on and on and on and on ...
... and Duracell, with "endurance" built-into their name ...
The experiment used three identical flashlights to compare how long each variety of battery kept the flashlight burning, and then divided that time by the cost of flashlight's battery.
Batteries were carefully tested before use to insure that they were fully-charged. Flashlights were rotated through battery types to make sure that the wiring or light bulb in each flashlight did not impact results.
In the kid's dramatic results, Energizer and Duracell's batteries would consistently burn, say, 20% to 30% longer than "Brand X," and so they won the endurance race, but "Brand X" batteries won the per-minute cost test by a mile. The difference was shocking. The kid's conclusion was that one has to be stupid to buy the heavily-advertised brands.
"Get Brand X instead!"
Three experiments by our boys were as follows.
THE BAROMETRIC PRESSURE TEST
In one case, I helped one of our sons build a home-made barometer out of junk, and then he had to get up every morning one half hour before sunrise (to eliminate the effect of solar heating) and record ambient barometric pressure and temperature and compare these to the day's weather.
The results were wonderfully consistent.
THE CLAIRVOYANCE TEST
One of our sons tested the ability of test subjects to predict the roll of dice. I helped that particular son construct a long, narrow wooden chute with heavily-textured carpet on the floor to force the dice to roll, so that the fashion in which the participant threw the dice could not possibly influence the results.
Actually, a photo of a sluice box
which resembles the simple wooden
"dice randomizer chute" without
the carpet
To minimize the element of coincidental correctness, each subject had to do 200 dice rolls, while the child doing the testing measured rights and wrongs.
Just in case the person's guess somehow "weighted" dice of the side of the number guessed-at, so that the number guessed-at was appearing on the down-side of the dice thrown, the down-side result was also recorded.
The results were intriguing. Out of about 2 dozen individuals tested, the results varied remarkably, despite hundreds of dice throws.
In other words, some people seemed substantially more likely than others to guess the upcoming dice roll.
THE SUSPICION TEST
For another science fair, with the permission of Mall administrators one of our other sons went to the Echelon Mall with about $50 in nickels and had a classmate try to give a nickel, with the words "Free money!," without further explanation, to Mall customers ...
... and then carefully recorded which group was most prone to accepting free money from a stranger, according to age and gender of the proposed recipient.
The decision was made to keep the age categories pretty broad, and then guess which age group the targeted recipient belonged to, to eliminate the need to actually ask the person their age, otherwise the study would be limiting itself to measuring the suspicion of just talkers, and not include the suspicion level of the shy non-talkers.
I.e., if they didn't record the willingness of the silent to accept money, they'd be excluding the results of those whose suspicion prevented them from talking, defeating the purpose of the test.
The results of that test were displayed in an explanatory booth at the Science Fair.
So, if you went into the Echelon Mall years ago and some nutty little kid was offering you "Free money!," that is what was going on!
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