Friday, December 09, 2005

The closet klepto

I judged another science fair on Wednesday. (Un?)Fortunately, these were done by high school honors students, so they were higher quality than the previous fairs I judged. They still left much to be desired.

One of the biggest problems with the projects was lack of originality. It seemed like half of the projects in my category (Chemistry) tested which laundry detergent works best. You would think that at least this is useful because you can learn which products to use, but each project tests the same detergents, and each one gets different results. So either Tide is the best detergent, or Tide is less effective than cold water. Take your pick.

The other half of the projects tested which hand soap works best. The methods for testing this usually involved putting vegetable oil in water, adding soap, and shaking them up to see what happens. One of these projects seemed to be more advanced. The student asked which antibacterial soap works best. Then she tested it by putting motor oil in water, adding soap, and counting the resulting drops of oil. I appreciate the use of a different type of oil, but this has nothing to do with bacteria. As G's dad will tell you, nothing can grow in oil. It's antibacterial itself.

The highlight of the science fair was the man I was paired with for judging. He was in charge of holding the score cards on a clipboard and writing down our notes. Every time we would leave a project, he would pick up the student's log book and/or report, stack it neatly with the clipboard, and move on to the next project. The first time he did this, I thought he might have a good reason, and having just met him, I didn't want to point out his mistake. But then he just kept doing it. He would realize he had picked up something that wasn't his a couple of projects down the line and he would look at the folder like he had no idea how he had gotten it. I would dutifully take it back to it's proper project. Then when we moved on to the next project, he would take that projects stuff. He did this over and over - at least five or six times. At one point he referred to himself as a closet klepto. That didn't stop him, though.

I wonder what it's like to work with him. I'd imagine you'd have to keep your desk completely clean or nail everything down. Otherwise, he'd be liable to walk off with something everytime he walked by.

By the way, none of the detergent or soap projects won.

No comments: