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bonysteak wrote:Did anyone else think Bungee Drop was run horrendously?

The drop mechanism was awful - it was a platform that you flipped in order for the bottle to drop. First of all what comes with this is the danger of the bottle tipping over on its side/flipping over as it falls. If they were gonna go with this stuff, at least make the platform straight...it was tilted -_-

And for another thing one of the drop heights was lower than the minimum 5 meters... I facepalm'd so hard...

John Richardsim wrote:

hotchocolate123 wrote:Also, I know trial events aren't as important as the 23 national events, but I really disliked the way Nebraska presented the trial awards this year. From my 4 years at being at nationals, every year (except this year) the trial events were announced at the awards ceremony and the competitors received a Science Olympiad medal. This year, (in my honest opinion) it just seemed like they were belittling the trial events. Not only did they separate the awards, but the medals were imprinted with a large University of Nebraska logo and the word "Trial Event". I got the fortune of sitting up close to the announcer, and the results were simply read off a sheet of notebook paper in the corner of the venue. Of course, this is just me being nit picky on certain things, but I just don't see the need to change the way trial events were presented before. After all, I'm pretty sure the competitors who participated in the trial events studied just as hard as those who competed in the actual events.

Yeah, trials being announced separately and the advertisement medals = lame. But hey, at least you got to watch the "celebrity" egg drop (I never realized how much the definition of "celebrity" could vary...).

John Richardsim wrote:I can only imagine the parade of states this way being quite unexciting and taking waaaaayyy longer than usual (to the point where it's flat-out boring).

Wow, I totally called this one. I also pity the teams that were first in the parade of states lineup, as although Michigan was probably about the 15th to 20th state in the lineup, by the end of it I was excruciatingly bored. The vast majority of the random state facts that they always said were lame and boring. After watching over a half an hour of this, I could hardly stand it anymore (once again, my greatest sympathy goes out to the first teams in the lineup that had to experience any more of that than I did). And if the parade of states wasn't "exciting" enough, the rest of the opening ceremony in my opinion was also was very..."fun". And if I wasn't having enough fun already, the end of it was somehow even worse than the flash mob last year (how that is possible, I don't know).

chinesesushi wrote:

bonysteak wrote:Did anyone else think Bungee Drop was run horrendously?

The drop mechanism was awful - it was a platform that you flipped in order for the bottle to drop. First of all what comes with this is the danger of the bottle tipping over on its side/flipping over as it falls. If they were gonna go with this stuff, at least make the platform straight...it was tilted -_-

And for another thing one of the drop heights was lower than the minimum 5 meters... I facepalm'd so hard...

From personal experience, the event supervisor for Bungee was absolutely terrible. It didn't seem like he read the rules at all, there are many different dropping mechanisms that are more effective. He didn't allow calculators/computers, nor did he allow people to verify the measured heights for themselves, nor did he allow one of the competitors to remain at the top to flip the switch and one at the bottom to see what the distance was. He also only had one spotter to look at the distance when the rules explicitly states that multiple spotters must be used. It is the worst-run event, with a close 2nd being bungee last year. Last year had much of the same problems as this year, and although the distances are recorded by a camera, they rely on the inaccuracy of a single spotter and do not look at the film much at all.

yugichess wrote:does anyone know where I can find the division B pictures at the award ceremony?

awesome90220 wrote:I believe that there should be a forum for pick-me-ups for those who screw up at nationals(like me)

Adi1008 wrote:

yugichess wrote:does anyone know where I can find the division B pictures at the award ceremony?

Last year you could find it on their Facebook page.

asdfqwerzzz2 wrote:I've only been to two national tournaments (NE and UCF) and I was wondering how NE compared to previous national tournaments. In my opinion, UCF was slightly better than NE, probably due to their extensive opening/closing ceremony. However, in terms of everything, including logistics, event supervising, etc., which national tournament has been the best in your opinion? This question is mostly targeted those with huge amounts of nationals experience.