National Scores

[sciolyperson1]

I was pretty surprised about it only being 47 seconds. I thought it was gonna be somewhere in the 50's and maybe even 60. Also will there be a picture of your device? That's something I'd love to see.

https://scioly.org/wiki/index.php/The_B ... irst_Place

Thank you for sharing. How did you adjust timing?

The aluminum "L"-beams/brackets were taped sturdily to the wooden board underneath it. To adjust the time, zig/zags were removed from the board. To be more precise, we could take a bracket off, then add another smaller bracket to decrease the times in smaller increments.

For nats, however, no adjustments were made to the device; it ran 47 seconds with all the zigzags in place.

[Bread]

Thank you for sharing. How did you adjust timing?

The aluminum "L"-beams/brackets were taped sturdily to the wooden board underneath it. To adjust the time, zig/zags were removed from the board. To be more precise, we could take a bracket off, then add another smaller bracket to decrease the times in smaller increments.

For nats, however, no adjustments were made to the device; it ran 47 seconds with all the zigzags in place

I'm even more impressed. I think I saw at least one that did something similar to that. I wanna say it was Kennedy but I don't quote me on it. Either way really nice build

[jander14indoor]

Heh heh

oh the pain of having a stubborn coach

I observed this too frequently with Mousetrap Vehicle, where making your device fit in a box that is 1 cm smaller on each dimension confers virtually no disadvantage.

However, 1 cm of height on a roller is worth approx 1.4 cm's of gap - and 2 cm's is the difference between 1st and 2nd.

But, the top 6 teams were within 1 cm of each other. ALL clearly less than 60 cm, typically 5-7 mm, none pushing to within a cm or so.

Yes, you need to do EXACTLY that sort of trade off. But the point is the trade off once you get close to the limits is not just that couple of points for height vs gap, but also tier 1 vs tier 2, much more severe. How close you push the limits is a mix of your risk aversion, your ability to measure, AND your confidence in the event supervisor's ability to measure.

Jeff Anderson
Livonia, MI

[ravichittari]

Summary of nationals scores
Top score 665, already posted, accurately described
2nd - 653 points, 84 cm across three gaps
3rd - 645 points, 84 cm across two gaps
4th - 608 points, 78 cm across three gaps
5th - 595 points, 72 cm across three gaps
6th - 559 points, 65 cm across three gaps
Pretty close between the top three. Time accuracy made a difference, height didn't, all 6 were 60 cm.

Max gap attempted (and made) 45 cm.

Top no gap device was 20th, 6 cm tall and within a second of target time. Lowest device was 4 cm and it was 21st.

Scores were above 500 through 9th, above 400 through 19th, above 300 through 36th.

Target time was picked partly because I thought the teams might be expecting something closer to the max.

9 teams were tiered, almost all due to being oversize. Typically only a couple of millimeters, and typically due to some added part that stuck out. Two things drive this:
- One, teams build too close to the max dimension, often for no good reason, the functional parts were well inside the max.
- Two, teams don't understand how to check a three-dimensional rectangular prism.

Overall a very good competition by the students, again it was great working with the students, wish I could have met more of you, but I had to spend the day measuring while my experienced timing team worked with most of you directly.

Enjoy your summer, Roller Coaster is rotated out next year, Robots is off rotation for a least a year, working on improving the rules.

Jeff Anderson
Livonia, MI

Thank you for proctoring this event!

Surprised scores were so close together as well.

Thank you for proctoring Roller Coaster. The whole proctoring team was excellent. Your method to measure gaps was super cool and accurate. Kennedy Middle School got 3rd at the event, and our total gap distance was 82 cm. Our runtime was 47 secs. 82* 5 + 47 * 5 = 645 We tuned our device to run well for target time up to 60 seconds.
Congratulations to all the medal winners and best wishes to all the teams who competed. Huge Kudos to 1st and 2nd medal winners for great execution.

[bernard]

Your method to measure gaps was super cool and accurate.

What was his method for measuring gaps?

[sciolyperson1]

Summary of nationals scores
Top score 665, already posted, accurately described
2nd - 653 points, 84 cm across three gaps
3rd - 645 points, 84 cm across two gaps
4th - 608 points, 78 cm across three gaps
5th - 595 points, 72 cm across three gaps
6th - 559 points, 65 cm across three gaps
Pretty close between the top three. Time accuracy made a difference, height didn't, all 6 were 60 cm.

Max gap attempted (and made) 45 cm.

Top no gap device was 20th, 6 cm tall and within a second of target time. Lowest device was 4 cm and it was 21st.

Scores were above 500 through 9th, above 400 through 19th, above 300 through 36th.

Target time was picked partly because I thought the teams might be expecting something closer to the max.

9 teams were tiered, almost all due to being oversize. Typically only a couple of millimeters, and typically due to some added part that stuck out. Two things drive this:
- One, teams build too close to the max dimension, often for no good reason, the functional parts were well inside the max.
- Two, teams don't understand how to check a three-dimensional rectangular prism.

Overall a very good competition by the students, again it was great working with the students, wish I could have met more of you, but I had to spend the day measuring while my experienced timing team worked with most of you directly.

Enjoy your summer, Roller Coaster is rotated out next year, Robots is off rotation for a least a year, working on improving the rules.

Jeff Anderson
Livonia, MI

Thank you for proctoring this event!

Surprised scores were so close together as well.

Thank you for proctoring Roller Coaster. The whole proctoring team was excellent. Your method to measure gaps was super cool and accurate. Kennedy Middle School got 3rd at the event, and our total gap distance was 82 cm. Our runtime was 47 secs. 82* 5 + 47 * 5 = 645 We tuned our device to run well for target time up to 60 seconds.
Congratulations to all the medal winners and best wishes to all the teams who competed. Huge Kudos to 1st and 2nd medal winners for great execution.

Congrats to you as well!

Looking at the scores:
1st: 86 gap, 47 seconds, 665 pts
2nd: 84 gap, 49 seconds, 653 pts
3rd: 82 gap, 47 seconds, 645 pts
4th: 78 gap, 64?? seconds, 608 pts
5th: 72 gap, 47 seconds, 595 pts
6th: 65 gap, 48 seconds, 559 pts

Three perfect times in the top 6... impressive.

[sciolyperson1]

Your method to measure gaps was super cool and accurate.

What was his method for measuring gaps?

He placed a aluminum frame around the device. After this, he used a linear laser measuring device (similar to a caliper, lasers were focused down onto the beginning and ends of each gap) and placed it on the top of the frame. By shining the ends of the gaps, he could find distance of the gap, from a ruler that measured how far the lasers were.