Towers B/C

[reed303]

I don't know about the rest of you guys and girls, but this season of science olympiad is over for me. My state tournament ending a couple weeks ago and I managed to place 2nd in Towers with the help of this forum thread. For that, I would like to say thank you to everyone. Towers has been my most favorite event for this year and after coming home I looked at all of the balsa wood events for the last ten years. From my observations I have concluded that Towers will stay for the next year. My question is for all of you people who have participated in the balsa wood events; do the rules for the balsa wood events change during the second year of their cycle? Something that you guys could think about is if the rules for Bridges in 2014-2015 were different from the rules in 2015-2016.

The last 2 years were Bridges, and the 2 before that were Boomilevers. And yes every years has some changes. One of this years was the Bonus circle.

https://scioly.org/wiki/index.php/Compr ... n_B_Events

[Random Human]

I don't know about the rest of you guys and girls, but this season of science olympiad is over for me. My state tournament ending a couple weeks ago and I managed to place 2nd in Towers with the help of this forum thread. For that, I would like to say thank you to everyone. Towers has been my most favorite event for this year and after coming home I looked at all of the balsa wood events for the last ten years. From my observations I have concluded that Towers will stay for the next year. My question is for all of you people who have participated in the balsa wood events; do the rules for the balsa wood events change during the second year of their cycle? Something that you guys could think about is if the rules for Bridges in 2014-2015 were different from the rules in 2015-2016.

there will be a three year cycle for towers

[Stear]

I don't know about the rest of you guys and girls, but this season of science olympiad is over for me. My state tournament ending a couple weeks ago and I managed to place 2nd in Towers with the help of this forum thread. For that, I would like to say thank you to everyone. Towers has been my most favorite event for this year and after coming home I looked at all of the balsa wood events for the last ten years. From my observations I have concluded that Towers will stay for the next year. My question is for all of you people who have participated in the balsa wood events; do the rules for the balsa wood events change during the second year of their cycle? Something that you guys could think about is if the rules for Bridges in 2014-2015 were different from the rules in 2015-2016.

The last 2 years were Bridges, and the 2 before that were Boomilevers. And yes every years has some changes. One of this years was the Bonus circle.

https://scioly.org/wiki/index.php/Compr ... n_B_Events

My question is whether or not there will be any changes to the rules for Towers next year compared to this year's rules.

[Balsa Man]

I can tell you that for the last 17 years, there has always been a change each year, even if the structure (tower, boom, bridge) stays the same.

[baker]

Rule #1 for build events....
Read the rules, READ THIS YEAR'S RULES.

[Dohnnovan]

Welp, had my state competition today and I took the alternative spot so I built the tower for the team to compete with, and they broke it before they even competed, how unfortunate.

[Balsa Man]

Welp, had my state competition today and I took the alternative spot so I built the tower for the team to compete with, and they broke it before they even competed, how unfortunate.

That's a real bummer, sorry to hear

[random-username]

How varied can the weights of the legs of the tower be? Mine are usually around 1.5g, but would it be bad if some sticks were 1.4, or is that too much of a difference?

[Balsa Man]

How varied can the weights of the legs of the tower be? Mine are usually around 1.5g, but would it be bad if some sticks were 1.4, or is that too much of a difference?

If you're working/trying to get tower weight down, you want as closely a matched set as you can get out of your wood supply.
Remember, it is the buckling strength that matters. So, one of the legs will be the weakest. For the tower to carry close to full load, that buckling strength needs to be sufficient with the bracing interval you're using. You want the other three to be the next 3 lightest that have the required buckling strength.

There can be- there is- significant variation at a given stick weight. There are for instance, 1.4s with buckling strength comparable to good 1.5s. There are at any density sticks with a lot less buckling strength than the good ones.

[Dohnnovan]

Welp, had my state competition today and I took the alternative spot so I built the tower for the team to compete with, and they broke it before they even competed, how unfortunate.

That's a real bummer, sorry to hear

Yeah, had a fun time though and that's what matters. Overall as a team we improved by 8 spots.