Efficiencies

andrewwski
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Re: Efficiencies

Post by andrewwski »

smartkid222 wrote:so the towers are designed to hold closer to the 15kg max because in real life bridges and towers are built to not fail and they didn't want to bring back the tier 1/ tier 2 holds/breaks rule.
Not to rehash this, but if that was their thinking...it still makes no sense. These events have very little relation to real life...if they wanted to emphasize real world principles, there's a lot of other things they could do other than change the scoring that would be more effective.
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Re: Efficiencies

Post by old »

I think we miss the point if we try to figure out real world connections to these building events. Tower building is the name of the event but it may as well have been called building a structure out of only wood and glue, that meet certain criteria listed in the rule book, that is rated based on a formula. I personally cannot imagine a realistic scenario in which anyone would build a scaled up version of any of the towers that have been or will be built for SO. Nobody builds commercial towers out of wood anymore. I can't think of a real tower that isn't attached the the ground. I can't think of a tower that doesn't have to withstand substantial side loads (wind). None of this is meant to argue that this event isn't worthwhile because I think that the various SO structure building events are great learning tools. It's just that I believe it is a mistake to think of these events as being in any way similar to designing real world structures of the same name (tower, bridge, beam, etc.).

What this and many other SO building events do is to require the builder to go through the design process and find a way to score the highest possible with the resources available. I rate these building events not on their connection to the real world but on the objectivity and repeatability of the scoring. In other words, I would consider the event to be a good one by how consistently a particular device would score if it was tested many times. I realize that there may be no practical way to test a particular device many times, due to the destructive nature of the testing, or fatigue or other damage. But Tower building I believe is likely to have a winner who actually built the device that should have scored best, with little luck (good statistical significance) involved. Some events like the notorious balloon race, and to a somewhat lesser extent bottle rocket, or Storm the Castle or Trajectory done outdoors, have a huge amount or random chance. I believe that the competitor who won Trajectory 2 years in a row at Nationals (I think he got second last year) didn't ever win his regional SO (done outdoors in the wind).

My point here is that as a competitor you should forget about what the event is called, forget about how an engineering team would design a device of the same name in the real world, and just carefully read the rules and build a device that is likely to score as high as possible within those rules and your resources. If you do a good job you will learn a great deal about designing and building things.
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Re: Efficiencies

Post by lllazar »

old wrote:I think we miss the point if we try to figure out real world connections to these building events. Tower building is the name of the event but it may as well have been called building a structure out of only wood and glue, that meet certain criteria listed in the rule book, that is rated based on a formula. I personally cannot imagine a realistic scenario in which anyone would build a scaled up version of any of the towers that have been or will be built for SO. Nobody builds commercial towers out of wood anymore. I can't think of a real tower that isn't attached the the ground. I can't think of a tower that doesn't have to withstand substantial side loads (wind). None of this is meant to argue that this event isn't worthwhile because I think that the various SO structure building events are great learning tools. It's just that I believe it is a mistake to think of these events as being in any way similar to designing real world structures of the same name (tower, bridge, beam, etc.).

What this and many other SO building events do is to require the builder to go through the design process and find a way to score the highest possible with the resources available. I rate these building events not on their connection to the real world but on the objectivity and repeatability of the scoring. In other words, I would consider the event to be a good one by how consistently a particular device would score if it was tested many times. I realize that there may be no practical way to test a particular device many times, due to the destructive nature of the testing, or fatigue or other damage. But Tower building I believe is likely to have a winner who actually built the device that should have scored best, with little luck (good statistical significance) involved. Some events like the notorious balloon race, and to a somewhat lesser extent bottle rocket, or Storm the Castle or Trajectory done outdoors, have a huge amount or random chance. I believe that the competitor who won Trajectory 2 years in a row at Nationals (I think he got second last year) didn't ever win his regional SO (done outdoors in the wind).

My point here is that as a competitor you should forget about what the event is called, forget about how an engineering team would design a device of the same name in the real world, and just carefully read the rules and build a device that is likely to score as high as possible within those rules and your resources. If you do a good job you will learn a great deal about designing and building things.
Wow now those are some strange occurrences(the traj ones).
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Re: Efficiencies

Post by paleonaps »

Old has a point. When I was building my first bridge two years ago, a kid in my technology class (the teacher was the coach so he let me build it during class time) came up to me and said "[paleonaps], what is the point of this bridge? How would cars get up onto the roadway?" The balsa events should not be done with a real world mindset, aside from building techniques such as miters, fishplates, and trusses.
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Re: Efficiencies

Post by Aia »

AlphaTauri wrote:Just [load supported]^2/[mass of tower]. Personally, I think the scoring system is a little weird, but I do like that they're trying to put a little more emphasis on holding more weight.
Wow, this is a very new system. I just looked at the tower information for this year, and I'm very surprised.
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Re: Efficiencies

Post by old »

It is going to take something over an efficiency of 45,000,000 this year to be in the top few at Nationals (that's carries all the weight, 15,000 grams, and a mass of 5 grams). In past years the top towers of very similar dimensions have carried all the weight and had a mass of under 5 grams. It is also going to be very hard for a tower that doesn't carry all the mass to beat one that does. To beat a tower that carried 15kg and had a mass of 5 grams, with one that carried 14kg, the 14kg carrying tower would have to have a mass of about 4.3 grams. With the old rules you could beat a 5gr tower that carried 15kg, with a tower that had a mass of 4.67 grams and carried 14kg. When you start getting down into the extremely competitive (low mass) towers, losing an additional 0.37 gram (7%) become very very difficult. I am betting that the top scoring towers this year are going to carry all the mass (or very close to it).

It is probably going to make sense this year to actually test the tower to almost 100% (15kg), even though in past years this would have been very risky and would have possibly done some damage to the structure.
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Re: Efficiencies

Post by nejanimb »

I'd actually wager it'll be well more than 45,000,000 to be in the top few. It wouldn't surprise me if a team or two hit 60 million.
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Re: Efficiencies

Post by lllazar »

Me and my "tower crew" (we have like 4 people working on it cause we want to place first at state again :)) built our first tower yesterday and tested it today - it was about 8.35 g and held 16.1kg.

So that's like 26.9 million...what do you guys think of the competitiveness of this score? I fee like we can really improve if we get the weight down - which we definitely should be able to seeing as it held an extra kg.
2011 Season Events~

Fossils (Regionals ~1st) (State ~6th)
Towers (Regionals ~1st) (State ~3rd)
Helicopter (Regionals -3rd gahhh) (State ~5th)
Wind Power (Regionals ~1st) (State ~3rd TIERED!)

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Re: Efficiencies

Post by robotman »

lllazar wrote:Me and my "tower crew" (we have like 4 people working on it cause we want to place first at state again :)) built our first tower yesterday and tested it today - it was about 8.35 g and held 16.1kg.

So that's like 26.9 million...what do you guys think of the competitiveness of this score? I fee like we can really improve if we get the weight down - which we definitely should be able to seeing as it held an extra kg.
It seems reasonably good I think people will have higher efficiencies than that though.
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Re: Efficiencies

Post by JimY »

Slow down everyone! The load supported is in kg, not grams. So, divide your scores (not efficiencies) by a cool million.

By the way, has anyone noticed that the C division dimensions are identical to the 2005-6 season and that the B divisions dimensions are identical to the 2007-8 season? Yes, I've been coaching this stuff for too long. Interesting wrinkle in the scoring though.
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