1. Fire Fighting
2. Smoke and heat detectors and their use to detect fire.
3. Improvement of fire detectors effect the number of fires.
4. A better designed smoke or heat detector will reduce the likelihood of injury or death to an occupant of a household.
5. Eliminating detectors with wires will reduce the chance of electrical problems.
6. Battery-powered detectors are as reliable as hard-wired detectors, eliminating the hazards of wired detectors.
Rowan Counterintuitive 
Step 1, LBirch, what broad topic will hold your interest for 12 weeks or so?
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This is shaping up, LBirch.
I question 4.
Maybe in a very few cases the improved response time makes a difference, but the primary value of the smoke detector is to the occupant. Right? It gives her time to evacuate. I’d be more than willing to be educated on this, but I don’t think smoke detectors exist to get fire fighters to the scene. They alert occupants.
Now, believe me, I LOVE 5 and 6 for their counterintuitivity. The very notion that smoke detectors do more harm than good is very exciting to me. (It’s a personal problem. :))
Can you prove it, is the first question.
Do we need to, is the other question.
Is there an alternative, would the the third question.
Hard-wired detectors don’t depend on occupants to check and replace batteries; therefore, they’re very efficient even in locations where maintenance is spotty.
Battery-powered detectors don’t short-circuit; therefore, they cause no fires.
However, batteried detectors often fail because of occupant failure to maintain them.
What if battery-powered detectors were as reliable as hard-wired detectors AND never caused fires?
Wouldn’t that be your 6? Battery-powered detectors as reliable as hard-wired detectors that eliminated the hazards of wired detectors! 🙂 Do they exist? Could they?
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I entered the simple phrase “smoke detectors” in the most general database search at the Rowan Campbell Library and came up with plenty of material on the overall topic.
If you go looking for articles specifically about smoke detectors that cause fires, you may be frustrated. But if you read several articles about smoke detector successes and failures, you’re bound to find a specific topic of interest worth arguing.
https://rowan.summon.serialssolutions.com/search?s.q=smoke+detectors#!/search?ho=t&l=en&q=smoke%20detectors
If you’re unfamiliar with the college databases, use the Campbell Library link in the sidebar of this blog to get to the Library.
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From now on, we can ignore this post, LB. Its purpose was to get the ball rolling. Any further revisions or enhancements to your Hypothesis can be accomplished inside your White Paper, which is already showing considerable progress. Keep up the good work.
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Ok, thank you very much for that. The notes and lecture last class helped me understand the track I should be on for this essay.
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