Sign Task

[AlphaTauri]

Congratulations to Northridge and all of those builders for coming up with the most incredible out-of-the-box design I have ever seen in Science Olympiad!

Literally.

I'm quite shocked that Northridge still won with a touch and a penalty. Guess that goes to show how good their device was.

[Paradox21]

Kudos to the teams who realized that the balloon was worth so many points (we had a few attempts at really large custom balloons, but they always leaked). I think that most of the teams who medaled at nationals did not run all 10 transfers. However, I can't help but think that the people who wrote the rules this year kind of failed. I don't think they intended to have Mission become a balloon construction competition (though the water rocket balloon is certainly some hard core engineering). The first day I got the rules I remember talking with DS about how concerned I was that the sign mass was valued so heavily, I don't understand how the rules committee did not catch this. Perhaps I am the only one who thinks it is wrong that a device medaled at nationals while having only the sand timer and a large balloon, but it seems to me that the rules for the event failed to correctly reward the intent of Mission Possible as an event.

[chalker7]

Kudos to the teams who realized that the balloon was worth so many points (we had a few attempts at really large custom balloons, but they always leaked). I think that most of the teams who medaled at nationals did not run all 10 transfers. However, I can't help but think that the people who wrote the rules this year kind of failed. I don't think they intended to have Mission become a balloon construction competition (though the water rocket balloon is certainly some hard core engineering). The first day I got the rules I remember talking with DS about how concerned I was that the sign mass was valued so heavily, I don't understand how the rules committee did not catch this. Perhaps I am the only one who thinks it is wrong that a device medaled at nationals while having only the sand timer and a large balloon, but it seems to me that the rules for the event failed to correctly reward the intent of Mission Possible as an event.

We absolutely did think about this. In fact, we were expecting more people to take advantage of the balloon points. We thought that it was a subtle extra engineering challenge for teams who could easily complete the other tasks. Now, instead of just doing the tasks they would also attempt to minimize their volume so they could construct as large of a balloon as possible. However....we thought the water rocket/balloon thing wouldn't work, but as always, you students are more creative/ingenius than us. Serious kudos to any team that could figure out how to lift huge amounts of mass (either through water tanks or other techniques).

[chalker]

We absolutely did think about this. In fact, we were expecting more people to take advantage of the balloon points. We thought that it was a subtle extra engineering challenge for teams who could easily complete the other tasks. Now, instead of just doing the tasks they would also attempt to minimize their volume so they could construct as large of a balloon as possible. However....we thought the water rocket/balloon thing wouldn't work, but as always, you students are more creative/ingenius than us. Serious kudos to any team that could figure out how to lift huge amounts of mass (either through water tanks or other techniques).

I'll confirm we had EXTENSIVE discussions about this last summer and did it on purpose. We even did calculations based upon the max volume of the box and the density of helium vs. air to figure out the max weight possible. However the one place we 'failed' I guess was with regards to using momentum and just barely clearing the top of the box for a split second. I take responsibility for that since I argued that it wasn't technically possible and convinced others to not worry about it. Up until then we had been working on a version of the rules that talked about the balloon reaching a 'stable' state, but were really worried about slight bouncing and wind currents and such.

Regardless, it's not going to be the ending task for next year. Congrats to Northridge for pulling off an awesome last minute design. Your story truly epitomizes the essence of Science Olympiad.

[Paradox21]

We absolutely did think about this. In fact, we were expecting more people to take advantage of the balloon points. We thought that it was a subtle extra engineering challenge for teams who could easily complete the other tasks. Now, instead of just doing the tasks they would also attempt to minimize their volume so they could construct as large of a balloon as possible. However....we thought the water rocket/balloon thing wouldn't work, but as always, you students are more creative/ingenius than us. Serious kudos to any team that could figure out how to lift huge amounts of mass (either through water tanks or other techniques).

I definitely understand that you wanted people to try to minimize the volume of their other tasks, but it appears that the balloon was so important that teams could cut out the majority of their transfers. The balloon became more important than the transfers. I would have thought that you would value the points in such a way (that is, make the sign worth fewer points per gram, perhaps 1 point per gram), so that the top scoring device would still have to fit all of the transfers in, but cram them in the smallest possible space. The winning team would be the team that could perform all the transfers perfectly, in the smallest space. Rather than making the largest balloon and omitting the transfers entirely.

[chalker7]

We absolutely did think about this. In fact, we were expecting more people to take advantage of the balloon points. We thought that it was a subtle extra engineering challenge for teams who could easily complete the other tasks. Now, instead of just doing the tasks they would also attempt to minimize their volume so they could construct as large of a balloon as possible. However....we thought the water rocket/balloon thing wouldn't work, but as always, you students are more creative/ingenius than us. Serious kudos to any team that could figure out how to lift huge amounts of mass (either through water tanks or other techniques).

I definitely understand that you wanted people to try to minimize the volume of their other tasks, but it appears that the balloon was so important that teams could cut out the majority of their transfers. The balloon became more important than the transfers. I would have thought that you would value the points in such a way (that is, make the sign worth fewer points per gram, perhaps 1 point per gram), so that the top scoring device would still have to fit all of the transfers in, but cram them in the smallest possible space. The winning team would be the team that could perform all the transfers perfectly, in the smallest space. Rather than making the largest balloon and omitting the transfers entirely.

We were predicting the top teams wouldn't exceed 150 grams (as described by my brother above). A team performing all the tasks with a perfect sand timer and a normal balloon would still beat a team that only used a balloon lifting that weight. That teams found momentum/water solutions was, admittedly, beyond our foresight. That being said, I'm honestly pretty excited when I find out that a team has a creative solution like that (although others certainly disagree).

[jsorrell414]

Congratulations to Northridge for pulling off the win. I was part of the second place team from Arizona: Catalina Foothills. We also used the water tank idea. Our balloon release mechanism was completed the night before in the shower as our previously devised release mechanism did not work. We therefore did not have time to find the maximum our balloon could lift and we could have lifted at least 50g more. But as murphy's law says, the mechanism did not work the morning of the competition and it took us a whole hour to set up the release mechanism. We therefore did not get the thirty minute setup time points and as our ice all melted we did not get points for the cooling task. We had all of the other tasks work however. We were able to lift ~385g. This is proof of the necessity getting things done early as our failure to do this probably cost us the championship.