Gravity Vehicle C

[onyxflame]

I have 2 questions:

1) Since rule 3g states that the ramp and vehicle in the starting position must fit in a 100x75x75 box, am I right to assume that the supervisors will take the measurements after everything is in the starting position?

2) After the measurements are taken and your vehicle/ramp exceeds the parameters are you allowed to re-position the vehicle/ramp and get re-measured so you stay within the dimensions of the box?

1) I doubt they would take the time to take measurements for everyone. I think that they would have a 100x75x75 box ready and just put the box over your ramp and vehicle and see if it fits.
2) They would probably penalize you, just make sure your vehicle and ramp fits and you won't have to worry about it...

[haverstall]

I have 2 questions:

1) Since rule 3g states that the ramp and vehicle in the starting position must fit in a 100x75x75 box, am I right to assume that the supervisors will take the measurements after everything is in the starting position?

2) After the measurements are taken and your vehicle/ramp exceeds the parameters are you allowed to re-position the vehicle/ramp and get re-measured so you stay within the dimensions of the box?

1. I would definitely assume that, although every event supervisor is going to be different. At my last invite, the supervisors only measured the ramp, not the ramp+vehicle.
2. Would be worth submitting a clarification, although you should already know how to position your vehicle and ramp before the actual meet. I would probably penalize that.

[Flavorflav]

2. I would probably give you your full ten minutes to make it fit in the box before you started your first run, with no penalty. If you couldn't make it fit, though, then you would get a construction violation - that's tier 3.

[illusionist]

So just for fun, I rolled a 5lb. dumbell down our ramp. It travelled the distance .2 seconds faster than my vehicle

[haverstall]

So, I already submitted a clarification about this, but I want to get your opinion.

We're trying to optimize the amount of weight on our vehicle. Right now we're thinking about a lesser weight for shorter distances, and greater weight for longer distances. Do you think it would be allowable for us to change the weight of vehicle during the "Event Time"? E.G. we put our heavy weight on our vehicle during impound, but find out that the official distance is like 6 meters, and thus we would change the weight to a lighter weight. And if we do so, are the event supervisors required to re-weigh our vehicle, or would they not have to, knowing that the lighter weight will obviously make our vehicle lighter.

[fishman100]

So, I already submitted a clarification about this, but I want to get your opinion.

We're trying to optimize the amount of weight on our vehicle. Right now we're thinking about a lesser weight for shorter distances, and greater weight for longer distances. Do you think it would be allowable for us to change the weight of vehicle during the "Event Time"? E.G. we put our heavy weight on our vehicle during impound, but find out that the official distance is like 6 meters, and thus we would change the weight to a lighter weight. And if we do so, are the event supervisors required to re-weigh our vehicle, or would they not have to, knowing that the lighter weight will obviously make our vehicle lighter.

Since the rules say that you can make adjustments to your vehicle during your 10 minutes, I would say that's legal.

For weighing the vehicle, I (as an event supervisor) would weigh the vehicle before and after each weight is added/removed to ensure that the vehicle doesn't exceed the 2.500 kg.

[sj]

It would also be my opinion that adding and subtracting weights during the 10 minute event time would be acceptable and is probably also something we will consider after regionals and invitationals next week.

On that note, we are starting to freak out a bit as we started to calibrate in the gym today and found that the floor was so low friction that our car was skidding all over the place... Is this something that other people have seen as well? Also for anyone who did Mousetrap at Conestoga last year how was the floor?

Tomorrow we will be testing in our schools new gym which hopefully has a better floor. Then seeing as we would have multiple sets of calibrations would it be acceptable to run our vehicle outside the competition area to see which data set is most similar? Has anyone who has been to tournaments already faced similar problems and if so how did you adjust? Clearly, one of the big factors in this event will be how close you can match a set of data to the floor on the day of the competition... Any ideas?

[illusionist]

We've made it a habit to wipe the floor with a dry or damp cloth before every 5 runs or so. We do this at competition and while testing. As far as combating the skidding, I would try to add weight over each wheel, or maybe try it again with the spring/foam.

[onyxflame]

So just for fun, I rolled a 5lb. dumbell down our ramp. It travelled the distance .2 seconds faster than my vehicle

LOL. That means your vehicle is a wooden block, or you have a really aerodynamic dumbell.

[NinjaChicken]

Sorry, I haven't read the other 20+ pages in this thread so it may have been addressed already:

Have any other teams had trouble reaching the 10 m mark? Can your vehicle easily surpass it?