winneratlife wrote:Building 2 ramps sounds tedious; as well, this would be incredibly dependent on friction (since energy should be conserved ideally and it would just be infinite oscillation sans friction) and thus way too dependent on the event floor.
Well, not if your breaking method depends on axle rotations.
Paradox21 wrote:Not to turn this event into Trajectory, but you could put an obstacle in front of the ramp that the vehicle must JUMP over before rolling to a target point. That would be a tough event.
Paradox21 wrote:Not to turn this event into Trajectory, but you could put an obstacle in front of the ramp that the vehicle must JUMP over before rolling to a target point. That would be a tough event.
It seems that questionguy has a head start!
questionguy wrote:Technically would you be allowed to have your vehicle go flying off your ramp in the air, like an airplane, and then just come back down?
Last edited by fishman100 on February 5th, 2012, 4:19 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Primate wrote:This event is not exciting. And I mean that entirely as constructive criticism. Don't get me wrong — it's certainly a challenge, and the rules are written well, but the concept will forever be lacking. Something like Scrambler is infinitely more exciting.
Please note that I was pleasantly surprised by the depth to other events (thermodynamics, in particular) that at first seemed simplistic, but this event hasn't grown on me. Perhaps it's just me?
I definitely agree that it is a bit more straightforward than previous vehicle events, but I'm quite pleased with the number of layers involved with improving the gravity vehicles (in particular making them go faster.)
Does anyone have any suggestions about how to make the event a bit more complicated, in particular with an added challenge of some sort (like the back and forth of mousetrap, speedbumps of scrambler in the past, etc)? We have a couple that we've thought about, but aren't sure if they are sufficiently challenging or viable for the event.
My two cents are pretty much the same as they were in September: don't require a ramp, simply specify maximum mass and height. Having some hammers. pulleys, and crossbows in the mix would liven things up. You could also increase the value of speed and throw in some kind of bonus for advanced teams, kind of like the bucket shot in Trajectory. Perhaps some bottles to knock down or a bonus for doing a 180 at the finish or something?
Just an idea, but a way to make the event more challenging would be to require the car to reverse. The car could be required to go a distance of 7m for example, then reverse and stop at a distance given by the event supervisor. The car would still only be propelled by gravity, but could use a mousetrap to reverse direction at 7m, and a breaking system that would stop the car. A multitude of challenges would be added by this, as a wing-nut breaking system would have to be modified significantly or another type of breaking system would have to be adapted to a car, due to the reversing of the vehicle. The weight of the car would be significant, as a greater amount of weight would require the car to reverse more momentum and make the overall time greater, but adding weight would change the CoM and make the car faster. So a compromise would have to be meet to reach the best possible time for a given distance. It would be easy for school's at the regional to national level to make an effective car, but it would also require a lot of effort to make the car competitive at a national level.
Harriton Class of 2013
Vice-Deputy of Avionics and Control for Lunar Lion
Assistant Coach of State College High School
