Designs

[icyfire]

SLM...
Just curious..How well did the tower do itself? As in the whole tower with the base, not the cynlidner only.

[SLM]

SLM...
Just curious..How well did the tower do itself? As in the whole tower with the base, not the cynlidner only.

When we tested the chimney and the base separately, each held the entire load. However, we did not pay close attention to the design and construction of the interface between the chimney and the base. Consequently, the team was not able to correctly vertically align the chimney relative to the base; the chimney ended up tilting to one side by about 5 or so degrees. The tower tipped over under 8kg load at one of our earlier tournaments. We did solve the alignment problem later on and experimented with the design a bit more, but eventually decided to go with an alternative design for the rest of the season.

[stardream23]

I was wondering our tower looks very similar to the Eiffel Tower and it held almost all of 15.5 kg due to out of time, but I want to ask is does anyone have a similar design or is there any room for improvements?

[Littleboy]

I was wondering our tower looks very similar to the Eiffel Tower and it held almost all of 15.5 kg due to out of time, but I want to ask is does anyone have a similar design or is there any room for improvements?

Someone at my regionals from C had something like that. It failed miserably.

[DaBalsa]

This may be kind of random, but I want to hear some opinions. After having been to many competitions...I too have noticed that many schools that usually don't do so well at this type of event are suddenly doing so well. I think this is because of the new scoring system. Although it is good in theory (more realistic), I think they should change it back to how it always was. I actually went to the NY State competition to watch the high schools teams compete in Towers and maybe get some ideas, and here I noticed the same thing. Also, I was watching FM/Spackenkill compete and FM's tower failed completely and I overheard that it had broken after impound, but had a mass of about 7? Maybe less? I couldn't get to taking a picture of it...but they got 41st place. I felt really bad for them, because if the rules hadn't changed, they would most likely have done much more decently. So essentially if a team that has worked really hard to develop a tower that could hold the entire load with a low mass had something bad happen to the tower (like FM), then the event would be a complete bomb because of the new scoring system. What say you?

[lllazar]

That's not really why i don't like the new scoring system, but i don't get your point. Regardless of the scoring system, teams are going to build as light as possible. And in this scoring system, there is actually a limit to how light you can build because you want to hold as much weight as possible. In the older scoring system, even lighter towers would have been present. It's unfortunate, but towers must be protected, like all building events (Except the big ones which aren't so delicate...)

[DaBalsa]

I mean the lighter the Tower the more fragile it gets...so, there is an increased likelihood it may break. With the old scoring system, this wouldn't hurt a team as much because their tower was fairly light, but now it exponentially destroys their efficiency/score. Also, the new system, as you said, limits innovation and new designs because of the weight limit.

[SLM]

I mean the lighter the Tower the more fragile it gets...so, there is an increased likelihood it may break. With the old scoring system, this wouldn't hurt a team as much because their tower was fairly light, but now it exponentially destroys their efficiency/score. Also, the new system, as you said, limits innovation and new designs because of the weight limit.

Real-life structures are designed and constructed to hold the loads they are intended to carry. If we consider Towers as an engineering event (not just a building event), then there is educational value in observing some of the engineering guidelines along the way. Regardless, IMHO, the new formula for calculating the score does not pose a significant obstacle towards creativity and innovation in this project.

[cool cat]

What is the best design for the top part of the tower???

[Littleboy]

What are some problems with C towers that people are having? Is it with the connection between the two halves, the base being slanted so much, or what? How are people solving these issues with little weight gain?