I have mixed feelings about his project, which I read on http://www.amnh.org/nationalcenter/youngnaturalistawards/2011/aidan.html.
Basically I think it's an OK project for a 13 year old, and probably much more interesting than anything else you'd find in a science fair. He wove a good background story, and I have no idea if he just copied Eden Full's project of 5 years ago - http://apps.ysf-fsj.ca/virtualcwsf/projectdetails.php?id=583&switchlanguage=en - winner of over CAN$4,000 in prizes - or genuinely came up with it himself.
But there are fundamental improvements that should be/have been made, and yes, his science adviser really should have picked up on them.
Measuring the power output would have been better, but voltage is much easier to measure accurately, and he's only 13. I think Vonskippy has said enough about that.
My main problem with it is the experiment he ran doesn't show the Fibonacci Series has anything at all to do with the tree performing better. He seems to have missed the point of what a control is for. A meaningful experiment would have pitted a randomly arranged tree against a Fibonacci arranged tree, with all the leaves at the same angles (to show it's only the Fibonacci spacing making a difference), or a flat array against a convex array that had panels pointing at a wider portion of the sky (a flat array will only be optimal at one time of the day, for one part of the year).
And there are questions that remain unanswered. Why does the tree look like it has twice as many solar cells? How did he decide what angle at which to place the cells? Did he try it in a location which didn't have a big diffuse reflector (the house wall) lending assistance to just one of the solar panel arrays? [Facepalm.]
It's hard doing the perfect experiment when you're 13.
I have mixed feelings about his project, which I read on http://www.amnh.org/nationalcenter/youngnaturalistawards/2011/aidan.html.
Basically I think it's an OK project for a 13 year old, and probably much more interesting than anything else you'd find in a science fair. He wove a good background story, and I have no idea if he just copied Eden Full's project of 5 years ago - http://apps.ysf-fsj.ca/virtualcwsf/projectdetails.php?id=583&switchlanguage=en - winner of over CAN$4,000 in prizes - or genuinely came up with it himself.
But there are fundamental improvements that should be/have been made, and yes, his science adviser really should have picked up on them.
Measuring the power output would have been better, but voltage is much easier to measure accurately, and he's only 13. I think Vonskippy has said enough about that.
My main problem with it is the experiment he ran doesn't show the Fibonacci Series has anything at all to do with the tree performing better. He seems to have missed the point of what a control is for. A meaningful experiment would have pitted a randomly arranged tree against a Fibonacci arranged tree, with all the leaves at the same angles (to show it's only the Fibonacci spacing making a difference), or a flat array against a convex array that had panels pointing at a wider portion of the sky (a flat array will only be optimal at one time of the day, for one part of the year).
And there are questions that remain unanswered. Why does the tree look like it has twice as many solar cells? How did he decide what angle at which to place the cells? Did he try it in a location which didn't have a big diffuse reflector (the house wall) lending assistance to just one of the solar panel arrays? [Facepalm.]
It's hard doing the perfect experiment when you're 13.