Participation in the NES Challenge will comprise five components:   Experiment Design, Use of Data, Final Report, and Presentation.  NES Brain Teasers are part of the Challenge but do not contribute to the scoring.

Experiment Design

Student teams must submit a description of their NES Challenge experiment to the NES Challenge website.  For NES Challenge 001, the topic is Return to the Moon,  so the description should explain how their research relates to NASA’s new initiative to develop new missions to the Moon.  The subject should be interpreted liberally to allow the students to be creative.  The NES Challenge Coordination Team will provide a few sample projects to give the participants an idea of the kinds of projects that would be acceptable.  The Experiment Design should fit easily on one piece of paper.  We plan to work with the teams using the DLN monthly support events, so that, in principle, by the time the students get to the Local Challenge, the Experiment Design should be deemed acceptable.

Scoring for Experiment Design (50 points)

The highest scores should go to the most creative, hands-on projects.  In particular, the students should pose a question at the beginning of the project that can be addressed through their research.  Five criteria for scoring are:

• Relevance to Challenge theme (10 points): Is the stated question relevant to the theme? Do the students pose a clear question to be answered?
• Project plan (10 points): Is the project well organized?  Are the roles of the team members clearly delineated?
• Use of data (10 points): Is the project measurment-based? Are the data used for measurement rather than simply pretty pictures?
• Creativity (10 points): How original is the idea?
• Complexity (10 points): How intricate is the project?  While a project need not be complicated to be good, students who put the effort into interesting projects should be rewarded for their efforts.

Use of NASA Information

Students must use at least one source of NASA information.  Other references are acceptable in addition to the NASA reference.  For example, student may choose to use measurements from a NASA mission in conjunction with visual observations from the Meade telescopes, observations obtained with the TIE network or other online data sources.

Scoring:  YES/NO

This will be a binary score:  if they use at least one NASA resource, they get credit.  If they do not, they are disqualified.  However, since we will be providing support along the way, in principle, by the time they get to the Local Challenge, this criterion should have been taken care of.

Final Report

The Final Report must be submitted to the NES Challenge website in a report format (i.e. full sentences, not bullets.  Word, RTF, plain text, PDF are all acceptable).  The students will upload load their reports from the NES Challenge homepage.  The Final Report must contain the following elements: 

Abstract (5 points): Brief summary (one paragraph) explaining the main points of the report.

Introduction (20 points):  Background on what the project is about.  This section should discuss the historical background for the current project and explain how the project relates to the Challenge theme (e.g. for NES Challenge 001, what does the project have to do with NASA’s return to the Moon?).  This section provides an opportunity for students to do background research.

Description of Project (30 points):  What question is the project addressing?  Why is this question important? How does the student plan to answer the question (i.e., How will their measurement answer the question they posed?)?  Students should go into detail about how they set up their project, what materials and equipment were used, how they constructed their set-up, etc.  Pictures of their project would be appropriate in this section.

Data Analysis (20 points):  Describe the data that are used and how they were obtained.   What information did the data provide to help answer the questions posed for the project?  How did the student obtain the information from the data (e.g., What measurements, observations and/or calculations were made?)  What tools were used to analyze the data?

Conclusions (20 points):  What has been learned from the project?  What further work does the project suggest?

References (5 points):  List all references used in the project.  A judge should be able to find the reference from the information given.  See Sample References.

Scoring:  100 points

Points indicated for each section above.  Note, spelling and punctuation count!

Presentation

The students must make an oral presentation of no more than 10 minutes in duration accompanied by a text and/or graphics presentation (e.g. HTML, PowerPoint.  Any electronic format is acceptable.).  The written component must be posted online along with the Final Report.  (Note:  Students will upload Final Reports from the NES Challenge hompage.)  One section of the oral report should be delivered by a family member.  Tag-team presentations are acceptable.

Scoring:  50 points

Presentations will be scored according to the following criteria: