Shock Value B/Circuit Lab C

[Bozongle]

Really bombed Shock Value at nats... 24th place and I ended up completely failing the test. I don't know why, I just had a brain fart, all the stuff I thought I knew I just completely forgot... .
Although I will say I didn't really look over that much of forces and charges, and Norton/Thevenin

[Toms_42]

Really bombed Shock Value at nats... 24th place and I ended up completely failing the test. I don't know why, I just had a brain fart, all the stuff I thought I knew I just completely forgot... .
Although I will say I didn't really look over that much of forces and charges, and Norton/Thevenin

We got 14th, and I agree, this test was COMPLETELY unexpected. It was the first test that asked questions about Norton circuits, and had absoulutely NOTHING about magnetism/electrostatics.

[Bazinga+]

hah nice. I failed and got 26th. We practiced a ton with the shock tests from 2011 and 2013, and we found out that it was a different supervisor than from last year a few days before we left. We had no idea what to practice with but the test was, i have to admit, much better than the one at nats last year. Last year it was wayyy too easy. This one focused on pointless stuff (ahem ahem... NORTON RESISTANCE!??!?!?! thats like the dumbest thing i have ever heard of...) and time consuption.we wasted all our time (like 30 mins) just trying to find what norton resistance was in our notes and trying to solve the 'you are given 6 7k resistors, so construct a circuit which has an equivalent resistance of...' yeah no. So we didnt answer like 5 or 6 questions on part 2. So the test pretty much focused on good use of time cuz i dont see any way of getting 100% on the test cuz of the resistor circuit construction...

[Voltage]

The resistor circuit construction actually went by pretty quickly for me. Maybe I'm just good at guessing. But the Norton and Thevenin stuff completely threw my teammate and I off. We ended up just doing regular voltages and resistances and hoped we were right. Also, the thing about what resistance gives the most power got us a bit confused. Were they talking about the power put out of the battery (too easy) or the power dissipated by the resistor? (hopefully somebody can answer this question for me )

Still got 4th though.

Also, while we were going out my teammate asked the proctor whether anybody had gotten a perfect score yet. He said no.

[Toms_42]

The resistor circuit construction actually went by pretty quickly for me. Maybe I'm just good at guessing. But the Norton and Thevenin stuff completely threw my teammate and I off. We ended up just doing regular voltages and resistances and hoped we were right. Also, the thing about what resistance gives the most power got us a bit confused. Were they talking about the power put out of the battery (too easy) or the power dissipated by the resistor? (hopefully somebody can answer this question for me )

Still got 4th though.

Also, while we were going out my teammate asked the proctor whether anybody had gotten a perfect score yet. He said no.

That's what I thought. I was a little confused at what they meant when they said "what resistance will have the most power." We said 0 ohms, implying that they meant most current because voltage is constant anyways (9v battery.) I did the first resistor network very fast because I programmed my calculator to do parallel resistors using a cell sheet, but my calculator turned off part way through due to inactivity and had to reconfigure itself, and ended up glitching out for the rest of the test, and my partner only brought a 4-function...

[Voltage]

The resistor circuit construction actually went by pretty quickly for me. Maybe I'm just good at guessing. But the Norton and Thevenin stuff completely threw my teammate and I off. We ended up just doing regular voltages and resistances and hoped we were right. Also, the thing about what resistance gives the most power got us a bit confused. Were they talking about the power put out of the battery (too easy) or the power dissipated by the resistor? (hopefully somebody can answer this question for me )

Still got 4th though.

Also, while we were going out my teammate asked the proctor whether anybody had gotten a perfect score yet. He said no.

That's what I thought. I was a little confused at what they meant when they said "what resistance will have the most power." We said 0 ohms, implying that they meant most current because voltage is constant anyways (9v battery.) I did the first resistor network very fast because I programmed my calculator to do parallel resistors using a cell sheet, but my calculator turned off part way through due to inactivity and had to reconfigure itself, and ended up glitching out for the rest of the test, and my partner only brought a 4-function...

You programmed your calculator to experiment with a set of resistors until it got the right equivalent resistance?! Wow. I could do that on a computer, but my experience with programming my HP50g is not to that level. It's too bad that your calculator glitched up.

There were two questions concerning the "what resistance gives the most power" sort of thing. On the first one I just put down 0 ohms. For the one at the end of part 2 I found myself putting a bunch of zeros in. My partner looked over my shoulder and asked whether I was sure. I thought about it for a while, and that's when I thought "Oh! Maybe they're talking about the power dissipated by the resistor!". Net result: I put 0 for the part 1 question and calculated a number for the part 2 question.

[Toms_42]

The resistor circuit construction actually went by pretty quickly for me. Maybe I'm just good at guessing. But the Norton and Thevenin stuff completely threw my teammate and I off. We ended up just doing regular voltages and resistances and hoped we were right. Also, the thing about what resistance gives the most power got us a bit confused. Were they talking about the power put out of the battery (too easy) or the power dissipated by the resistor? (hopefully somebody can answer this question for me )

Still got 4th though.

Also, while we were going out my teammate asked the proctor whether anybody had gotten a perfect score yet. He said no.

That's what I thought. I was a little confused at what they meant when they said "what resistance will have the most power." We said 0 ohms, implying that they meant most current because voltage is constant anyways (9v battery.) I did the first resistor network very fast because I programmed my calculator to do parallel resistors using a cell sheet, but my calculator turned off part way through due to inactivity and had to reconfigure itself, and ended up glitching out for the rest of the test, and my partner only brought a 4-function...

You programmed your calculator to experiment with a set of resistors until it got the right equivalent resistance?! Wow. I could do that on a computer, but my experience with programming my HP50g is not to that level. It's too bad that your calculator glitched up.

There were two questions concerning the "what resistance gives the most power" sort of thing. On the first one I just put down 0 ohms. For the one at the end of part 2 I found myself putting a bunch of zeros in. My partner looked over my shoulder and asked whether I was sure. I thought about it for a while, and that's when I thought "Oh! Maybe they're talking about the power dissipated by the resistor!". Net result: I put 0 for the part 1 question and calculated a number for the part 2 question.

I realized that too late, and we ended up doing much more poorly than I had hoped (14). It's pretty easy to do a program on a Ti-89, but it took it a little while to do each calculation. (I may experiment with trying to make it look mostly at the decimal value than just brute forcing it. Usually I do it manually using another cell sheet that purely calculated equivalent resistance of a set of resistance.

[Schrodingerscat]

If it was asking for what resistor would dissipate the most power when plugged into a circuit, the answer is one that is equal to the equivalent resistance of the remainder of the circuit. It is called the Maximum Power Transfer Theorem.

[Bozongle]

Wow, I thought I would be the only one to not know Norton/Thevenin's theorem. I wish I had gotten really hard Shock Value tests like this before, all my previous tests I had taken like State/New Albany/etc are all 10x easier than what the nats test was like...

I'm also guessing winning team (Muscatel) probably had Norton/Thevenin right.

[Voltage]

If it was asking for what resistor would dissipate the most power when plugged into a circuit, the answer is one that is equal to the equivalent resistance of the remainder of the circuit. It is called the Maximum Power Transfer Theorem.

The problem being discussed went something like this (here's the part where somebody scolds me for getting the wording wrong):

Simple circuit with a few resistors in series. One resistor labeled x. Question: what resistance x will give maximum power dissipation? The confusion is whether it is the power dissipation of the entire circuit or of the resistor x. So, yeah, basically what you said.

I didn't know the theorem, so I had to go through the math and that took a bit of time. I did get the equivalent resistance of the remainder of the circuit, which means, yay, I got the part 2 problem right! It also means (since the fact that there is a specific theorem about it suggests that the problem was talking about power dissipation of the resistor x) that our team got the part 1 problem wrong.

Thank you for the info. It'll be a useful thing to know if they decide to do this event again next year.