My PBL Project

Question: What is Disease Detectives?

Introduction: Disease Detectives focuses on epidemiology. Epidemiology is the study of distribution and determinants of health-related states in specified populations, and the application of this to control health problems. There are four basic reasons for why disease detectives study and research outbreaks and epidemics. These reasons are: Control and Prevention, Research Opportunities, Training, and Legal Concerns.

Materials: For this event we will use pencils, paper, prior knowledge, luck, and the test booklet.

Procedure: In this event we will study until the day of the competition, and then take the test and hopefully win a medal for our school.

Scientific principle: The scientific principle for this experiment is to research diseases, and control and prevention of diseases.

References: http://www.soinc.org/disease_detectives_b, http://scioly.org/wiki/index.php/Disease_Detectives, & previous tests

Formal Report:

For the Science Olympiad event, Disease Detectives, I, along with my fellow event participants and group members, will need to answer questions from the packet the event coordinators will provide. Some of the questions might ask for certain elements, several of which include the statement of the problem, hypothesis, variables (controlled, independent, and dependent), control, procedure, observations (quantitative and qualitative), statistics, analysis, possible sources of experimental error, conclusion, and further applications for further experimentation.

In general Disease Detectives is the study of epidemiology which is the study of diseases and how they are spread. This event creates awareness on how to prevent diseases, how to diagnose diseases, and how to minimize the damage if a outbreak were to occur.

We, as a group of Disease Detectives, have taken several sample tests to become more familiar with the event. Also we have studied the basic vocabulary and familiarized ourselves with the rules and regulations. I have studied some of the specific components on how to investigate a disease, memorized a few of the formulas on how to calculate how many people have been affected by a certain disease.