Battery Buggy B

[new horizon]

congratulations to the medalers in this event at nats!

does anyone know the national distance as well as the scores? thanks =)

[Jocool]

they were really good scores at nats, thats all i know.

[new horizon]

of course.

I don't know how gelinas and solon did so poorly, NY posted their scores and gelinas did really good at states!

car malfunction?

[Jocool]

probably, gelinas did well overall tho.

[new horizon]

they did. i have to give them credit for that. good job gelinas =)
I saw the NY state score. That's pretty impressive. I was thinking they'd place if nothing went wrong competition day.

I didn't expect CMS (NJ team)to do well in this event (honestly if my buggy which just is terrible can beat them), but some events I was rather surprised.
Since nats is over, i'll post the scores for our buggy at states.

4.2 cm off, about 7 sec for 6.9m. When I led the testing I didn't do the time, I just worked for distance. We didn't do so much work on gear ratios (that was the first thing after states we were going to work on if we went to nats), and we would have changed the chassis to a balsa wood one so it's accelerate faster. We had a slight right skid, we fixed that after states and we realized that one of the wheels was not installed properly and broke before the other wheel.
our design was a simple wingnut axle rod system, hit a microswitch at the end to stop the circuit. We used a I think pine or beech wood chassis (this is bad, really bad, please don't do it) that our woodshop teacher supplied us with. We used ball bearings, they aren't needed but I find them helpful to reduce the rolling friction, plus I bought them over the summer because we needed to do this event to try out into the team. we used VEX parts for the back. I like the square VEX parts because they lock easier, that's just my preference. We used a balsa wood stick as our sighting device, but my teammate who did it did not use the scope he saw some markings on the floor and used those.

My other teammate, he really didn't do anything. just kinda sat there.

[glaciergary]

I don't know how gelinas and solon did so poorly, NY posted their scores and gelinas did really good at states!

car malfunction?

I am answering for the Gelinas Battery Buggy team. We don't know what happened to get 30th place, unless all the other buggies were incredibly good.

The final distance was about 7 cm and the time was about 3 seconds. My team can give you more accurate details, but I witnessed it and took photos.

We would love to hear how other teams did who placed.

Gary Vorwald
Coach
Gelinas Science Olympiad

[glaciergary]

Actually, the distance is probably closer to 10-15 cm.

Coach V

[SLM]

Actually, the distance is probably closer to 10-15 cm.

Coach V

Longfellow MS was ranked 9th with a total score of 98.2. The distance was 45 mm and the time was 3.66 seconds.

[new horizon]

Most likely the 10 or so cm that you were off caused the placing, as that's 100 points right there (quite a bit).

I would estimate that the 1st place buggy probably was off by less than 1/2 cm and around 3 seconds or so for 8 or so meters. It was probably very close.

Anyways, do you know what systems the judges used to time? did they use stopwatches? That's probably a poor idea because the 1st and 6 were probably off by very very little.

[Jocool]

good point.