Hovercraft B/C

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Re: Hovercraft B/C

Post by maxxxxx »

LittyWap wrote:I really am praying for fastest wins, I had a design that got under a second!
I feel like there are enough "fastest wins" events and this would essentially become floating Battery Buggy for B division. I wouldn't be surprised if they added in the predicting aspect from MagLev. Your idea of lightest mass is pretty interesting though, I think some combination of that with something else(that would require big batteries or something heavy) would make for some innovative designs.
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Re: Hovercraft B/C

Post by LittyWap »

UltramatrixMan wrote:
LittyWap wrote:I really am praying for fastest wins, I had a design that got under a second!
\

I would wager that they will not ever make the competition fastest wins, because Chalker has said multiple times that fast is a safety issue, which was the whole problem with maglev. I also think that he said slower is harder from an engineering stand point too? Correct me if I'm wrong Chalker, which you already have multiple times today XD.

You'd be right to assume that faster is more dangerous.... On our second trial during a Ohio invitational, our <1 second vehicle (it was the only vehicle we had at the time) slammed into the barrier unexpectedly forcefully, and dented the shielding. This compounded in the denting of our shielding and a few textbooks on the floor... Faster is not a good idea, but you never know, the people who make the rules make mistakes too.

Now that chalker is watching, may I suggest rubber band powered Hover? It would certainly make for safer vehicle!
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Re: Hovercraft B/C

Post by ericlepanda »

LittyWap wrote: rubber band powered Hover? It would certainly make for safer vehicle!
no plz i like electricity
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Re: Hovercraft B/C

Post by LittyWap »

My partner and I joked briefly about jet powered hover, where tanks of Nitrous Oxide replace batteries. I mean, as long as lift is powered by a fan blade and motor, I don't think jet engines are discounted by the rules. (Of course I'm joking!)

More seriously, something like bottle rockets, where the propulsion of the vehicle is pneumatic, and the test is about gas laws?
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Re: Hovercraft B/C

Post by Ashernoel »

Who knows maybe there will be required testing sheets that need to be done on five surfaces that are given and then one is chosen at the competition but all graph have to be turned in, kinda like thermo :p
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Re: Hovercraft B/C

Post by sciolyFTW_aku »

Hi,

For those of you who are slightly triggered by the fact that the track wasn't good/your hovercraft didn't perform up to expectations, here's a little story:

In the month before nationals, I tried to get data about my hovercraft with the track that my coach built me, but due to modifications/the track not being good (it kept on stopping at about 120 cm), I was unable to get any real data. However, due to the fact that my hovercraft didn't depend on the material of the side walls/track and that the target distance was 120 cm. I was able to get a pretty good time through intuition at the competition itself (19.67s). Yes there was definitely a bit of luck involved right here, but my main point is that I feel like it depends on more how you use your 8 minutes efficiently at the competition then taking a whole ton of data before it. (Of course this doesn't apply to the people who had a bad track, that's just bad luck.)

Also, my partner and I bombed the test (left 9 questions blank), but we still got 6th, showing that few teams were able to get a good time score and the test was hard as well.

Thanks,
sciolyFTW_aku
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Re: Hovercraft B/C

Post by LittyWap »

sciolyFTW_aku wrote: it depends more on how you use your 8 minutes efficiently at the competition, rather than taking a whole ton of data before it.

I would tend to disagree. Acquiring an excessive amount of data before competition provides all the information with which you may maximize your eight minutes. Should you bet on the fact that everything will just fall in your lap, (track is the same as the only one you tested on, track width is uniform throughout, distance is precisely the only distance you could achieve) you will certainly have to bet on luck. Praying that everything will work out in the end is in direct contradiction to the spirit of Science Olympiad and Science itself. Unlike other schools of thought, Successful scientists make use of predictions and information that they have acquired to excel. Of course, for us naive scientists, a healthy dose of luck is certainly welcome, with quality data being the fundamental component for succeeding.
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Re: Hovercraft B/C

Post by Unome »

LittyWap wrote:Acquiring an excessive amount of data before competition provides all the information with which you may maximize your eight minutes.
Full agreement with this statement especially. When I did Simple Machines, the reason we did so well on the lever (third-best lever score at Nationals that year, and luck could have pushed us ahead of Longfellow since we were only ~1 second slower) was because we prepared for every possible situation we could think of. After getting 3rd at state in 2014 due to the materials used on the masses' loops being different than what we had been practicing with, we made sure to switch up our loop material, the shape of the masses, etc. when we did practice. We also prepared for as many different mass ratios, both at the extremes and nearer to the middle, to optimize our accuracy (for example, using more of the lever if the masses were of roughly similar mass to increase accuracy), and devised a precise method to maximize speed. The same roughly applies to any build within physics or tech (and plenty of other lab events as well).
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Re: Hovercraft B/C

Post by ftf841 »

sciolyFTW_aku wrote:Hi,

For those of you who are slightly triggered by the fact that the track wasn't good/your hovercraft didn't perform up to expectations, here's a little story:

In the month before nationals, I tried to get data about my hovercraft with the track that my coach built me, but due to modifications/the track not being good (it kept on stopping at about 120 cm), I was unable to get any real data. However, due to the fact that my hovercraft didn't depend on the material of the side walls/track and that the target distance was 120 cm. I was able to get a pretty good time through intuition at the competition itself (19.67s). Yes there was definitely a bit of luck involved right here, but my main point is that I feel like it depends on more how you use your 8 minutes efficiently at the competition then taking a whole ton of data before it. (Of course this doesn't apply to the people who had a bad track, that's just bad luck.)

Also, my partner and I bombed the test (left 9 questions blank), but we still got 6th, showing that few teams were able to get a good time score and the test was hard as well.

Thanks,
sciolyFTW_aku
I actually didn't really test my hovercraft at all before nats, since at states and regionals, they let us have a bunch of trial runs during the 8 minutes, so I just guess and checked until the time score was close to the target time, and then I started my actual runs. I went into nats thinking the event was going to be run the same way, and I was pretty shocked when i realized that it was run wrong at states and regionals. My time score was pretty bad (29 seconds), but we managed to place 18th somehow.
i'll work on my events eventually

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Re: Hovercraft B/C

Post by SciolyMaster »

UltramatrixMan wrote:
chalker wrote:
UltramatrixMan wrote:For Division B, I know that all of the top 12 or so teams had times within a half of a second, and that was all that determined the places.
This is not true at all. Even within the medalists there was a significant time spread.
Hm, I did talk to the ES and must have misunderstood what he said to me. Can you at least give us some idea of how close the top 10 or so teams' scores were?
Our best run time was 14 seconds... yet we still got 6th place! It was all because we did so well on the test, plus we had a max weight hovercraft.
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