Poorly Run Event Stories

[DatSciolyBoi]

Last year in Mystery Architecture, we went to Cal Tech for states. While my partner and I were working, a team started to argue. Eventually the two people were hurling insults back and forth. The Cal Tech students that supervised just sat and watched the whole time, so did everyone else in the room, except me and my partner. We got second, so yeah, lesson, always take advantage of the situation.

[samlan16]

Off to Reddit to post on /r/tifu.

Still waiting on that

Just realized that it's been a year and I never posted it. Oopsies.

[satvik03]

At UCC Regionals, we were supposed to make parachutes for experimental design, but we didn't get string (the ES ran out). We used broken rubber bands instead. At states, the ES came in 20 minutes late, but other than that, it the ES ran the event pretty well. However, this made me late to thermodynamics, which is another story...

Ok, so they said our thermodynamics device was too big (more than 20 cm), when this issue never occurred at any other invitational (LISO, Rustin, Garnet, Cornell). We measured, and it was clearly less than 20 cm. Then, after 5 minutes, they checked it again, and said it was fine now, and they gave us a corrected competition violation, which basically is a multiplier. We did not even change anything! It led to a deduction of 8-15 points. This resulted in us getting 5th

[Scrambledeggs]

Last year at Socal states for code busters, every question was around 6-10 sentences long and there was 20 questions ... enough said.

[MadCow2357]

Finally got time to post this story...

But first of all I'd like to thank the RI Boomilever Event Supervisors this year for not using Pre-Moisturized Blue Crayola Play Sand, or any other color for that matter.

However, it seems that they find a way to mess up the structure events every year... This time, it was the scale. There were several problems with the scale:
1. It measured imperial Dude, how hard is it to go metric? I bought a metric 0.01g scale for twelve bucks But I guess you can convert imperial into metric, so good to go?
2. The scale was really old. Like, really really old. And definitely not accurate. Well that sucks but I guess if it measures everyone's inaccurately it's fine?
3. It measured in pounds. Woah that's a red flag there!
4. It's capacity was 60 pounds. WTF how do you even measure something so light on a scale meant to measure 60 pounds!!!!!!!

Yeah so basically they used the same scale to weigh the sand AND the boomilevers. Even the heaviest ones (like over 100 grams) weren't really registering on the scale. So anything below 1/8" of a pound (about 57 grams) they guessed... Last year they used triple beam balances that measured to the gram, so I did account for the fact that they'd probably mess up the weight of the boom by a bit, and built my states boomilever to go for load instead of weight. It weighed 9.78 grams, but they measured it as 24. Of course, I appealed and argued with them (our parents and coaches did too), and they finally lowered my weight to 22.5g... over 2 times the actual weight. Basically they recorded approx. 735, which was less than half of my actual efficiency (1473). Luckily I still won first by a pretty big margin If this was the bomb that prevented us from going to nats, I would have - actually I don't know what I would have done, but probably something stupid lol.

They also measured our high school's boomilever at 1/24 of an ounce (like 2 grams), when it actually weighed 13g. Of course with a recorded efficiency of about 5000, our HS won first.

[waffletree]

Finally got time to post this story...

But first of all I'd like to thank the RI Boomilever Event Supervisors this year for not using Pre-Moisturized Blue Crayola Play Sand, or any other color for that matter.

However, it seems that they find a way to mess up the structure events every year... This time, it was the scale. There were several problems with the scale:
1. It measured imperial Dude, how hard is it to go metric? I bought a metric 0.01g scale for twelve bucks But I guess you can convert imperial into metric, so good to go?
2. The scale was really old. Like, really really old. And definitely not accurate. Well that sucks but I guess if it measures everyone's inaccurately it's fine?
3. It measured in pounds. Woah that's a red flag there!
4. It's capacity was 60 pounds. WTF how do you even measure something so light on a scale meant to measure 60 pounds!!!!!!!

Yeah so basically they used the same scale to weigh the sand AND the boomilevers. Even the heaviest ones (like over 100 grams) weren't really registering on the scale. So anything below 1/8" of a pound (about 57 grams) they guessed... Last year they used triple beam balances that measured to the gram, so I did account for the fact that they'd probably mess up the weight of the boom by a bit, and built my states boomilever to go for load instead of weight. It weighed 9.78 grams, but they measured it as 24. Of course, I appealed and argued with them (our parents and coaches did too), and they finally lowered my weight to 22.5g... over 2 times the actual weight. Basically they recorded approx. 735, which was less than half of my actual efficiency (1473). Luckily I still won first by a pretty big margin If this was the bomb that prevented us from going to nats, I would have - actually I don't know what I would have done, but probably something stupid lol.

They also measured our high school's boomilever at 1/24 of an ounce (like 2 grams), when it actually weighed 13g. Of course with a recorded efficiency of about 5000, our HS won first.

holy crap it really isnt that hard to buy a scale (i found a mediocre one on amazon for $2...)
and even if they're gonna estimate, an attempt should be made to get a good estimate that isn't >10 grams off

[SilentBreeze05]

Part of the ERAU Regional test for Potion and Poison was about animals and plants that were from last year.I asked the supervisor for the category if the animals were supposed to be on the test (since they're last years organism and not this year.) She responded in a very rude tone and said something along the lines of "The organism listed on the test don't matter since they're poisonous and have a toxic.Even though they aren't on the rule sheet you're supposed to know these." She ended up getting really sassy with me because I corrected her, and told her that the organism on the test weren't on the rule sheet.

[Things2do]

Part of the ERAU Regional test for Potion and Poison was about animals and plants that were from last year.I asked the supervisor for the category if the animals were supposed to be on the test (since they're last years organism and not this year.) She responded in a very rude tone and said something along the lines of "The organism listed on the test don't matter since they're poisonous and have a toxic.Even though they aren't on the rule sheet you're supposed to know these." She ended up getting really sassy with me because I corrected her, and told her that the organism on the test weren't on the rule sheet.

That reminds me of two years ago at State when Scrambler was held in a hallway, which was wide enough, that had a floor that was rougher than a textured ceiling... Although they had a practice track you could use downstairs, on a nice, smooth tile floor...
I was informed that "Well, the rules don't always apply."... Five cars had wheels wide enough to not be affected, and the rest of us had CDs. I would've probably won or gotten second if they'd used the tile floor. I was <1 cm from the wall at Regions, and I was doing that consistently on the practice track, which was the same distance as the actual track. My coaches knew it was bad, but it was the next Tuesday at the meeting before they realized how bad it was.

[Birdmusic]

ES asked our time slot (first one) what tuner to download... at States.

Also didn't actually measure one meter, just guessed and put a tape there so ig fair for everyone?

Somehow we got first ^^ (obviously we didn't recommend Google Sci Journal, all SoM competitors know that app is horrible for chordophones and idiophones)

[TheCrazyChemist]

Ok, this won't sound bad, but Thermodynamics was terrible at our states. For one, the test and the device part was split into two periods, so I couldn't do heredity. On top of that, thermo was terrible. The test was super short and easy. Like, two history questions, and then 15 multiple choice. 5 short answer questions that were super easy and there's the test. The device part was even worse. They distributed water at different temperatures. I not sure if they realized that that gave the teams with higher temperature water a 5 point advantage on the heat score, but it was stupid. Next, they couldn't count a data series. They said 10 data points were five. It was jut terrible. But not as bad as some of the stories I've read on this discussion.