MagLev C

[Balsa Man]

No interest in hijacking either, but this is an important issue, so…
As I said, I wholeheartedly agree; I believe the full scoring details on building events should be available/distributed to everyone- just like team scores, showing placing in each event are. At a minimum, this should be so for those that are interested.

S.O. is about learning – in the case of building events, learning, figuring out how to optimize performance under a given set of constraints, and considering (sometimes conflicting) scoring factors. Its learning the basic physics/mechanics at work; learning the engineering to deal with the physics, and figuring out how to best make various tradeoffs to maximize score.

The building events are held where people watch- not with one team at a time locked in a room with a judge. Watching, and using that watching to learn is 100% consistent with the objectives of S.O.
As we all know, event scheduling means in most cases, neither competitors nor coaches have the luxury of being at all the runs of all the events, or, often at the few runs you’re really interested in – when your close competitors go, when the winners go.

As Stingray points out, teams that have the luxury – and I would argue unfair advantage – of enough volunteers to observe and collect the data can have the “full performance data.” Those that don’t have that luxury/advantage are in the dark. Given the rules language against rules interpretation that give an unfair advantage, I would argue that keeping something secret to most that is available to some is…..against the rules- certainly against the spirit of the rules.

Specific, full performance information – scores in each of the scoring factors, is critical to the engineering process that, hopefully S.O. is intended to teach; knowing what the state of the science is, figuring out ways to take it to the next level. Keeping this in a MagLev context (and just on vehicle score). Scenario 1- you know you got 6th place; you have no idea how far your vehicle’s performance was from the top, or the place ahead of you; did you get beaten on run time; time prediction. Scenario 2; you know you got 6th place. You know your run time was within a tenth of a second of third, but your predicted time was way off- what do you work on???

Enough. I see absolutely no good, valid reason that data on all the scoring factors for an event should be withheld, and only available to the few with the resources to gather it, and I see many reasons that the spirit of the rules would be to share it with all.

This approach would have no impact of working up placings for award ceremonies- ESs have to work through the multiple scoring factors to get final scores to rank; the data is there. If it's in a spreadsheet (which it often is), post/make accessable; if its on paper, pdf it, post it, make it available- a few days, a couple weeks after, no big deal
End of rant.

[Stingray355]

Well said Balsa Man!

[erikb]

I will start with the first issue. A team with so many parents they can be at all the build events "stealing"

Our state has a team like that. One team has parents at every event. The parents are constantly taking pictures, asking questions and filing complaints. And i welcome it. For a few reasons.

1. Those teams tend to be "too" parent involved. The builds are not done by the students or overly directed by the parents/coaches. The students have no vested time in the the build. The students do not understand how it works and what to do if it goes wrong. If the gravity vehicle suddenly seizes up. They are stuck. Most importantly if the parents are asking the questions then the kids are not. I instruct my kids to help any student that asks them for help or advice. However, they are allowed to decline if it is a parent.

2. The students need to develop what works for them. As i was sitting in robot arm over the weekend i overheard the above mentioned team parents talking about replicating our teams robot arm. I found it incredibly amusing because not one sentence was dedicated to the students input or how it would work for the students. The entire conversation was we are going to build this and they will use it. So that gives us two advantages next year. 1. we know what the will be bringing to the table. 2. It won't be built to suit the students. We have a pair of twins. So two arms is easy for them. They designed it. They worked on it until it worked for them. And at state they had a perfect score with 30 seconds to spare when they went for the bonus ping pong and knocked over a bucket. They got second. But they were the best team with the best robot arm that day.

3. I kinda touched on this in the previous paragraph. But they will be working replicating what we did. While we are building better versions. They will always be behind and we know how to beat what we build. Until they sit back and stop worrying about what everyone else is doing and let the students do the learning and building they will always be behind.

The irony of it all is, that team is the same one that filed complaints against us and other teams for taking pictures of their stuff build events.

However, it is because of teams like them there is a clarification on photos. Impounded items can not be inspected or photographed and is documented in the official science olympiad site.

As for posting scores. I think the final scores should be posted especially for the build events. But that is only because i lay awake at night worrying. But individual results on tests, that would be a horrible idea. It takes forever as it is, to get the event over and official results posted. I could not imagine how long it would take if some schools could nit pick every answer. This year they had to put a deadline in on complaints to one hour and it still took forever to get the final results.

In addition. They way it is. It forces the kids to interact. To find out what the 2nd place team in mag lev did, my kids had to go over and talk to them. And as it turns out it was an amazingly close event. 1700 grams in .7 seconds to 1900 grams in .7 seconds. They won the build portion by just 200g. They scored near perfect on the test though

Most importantly, most coaches are good people. Any student that comes up to me i will help. As, Len, you help mine. I had more students from other schools thank me for helping them, at the end of sat night then i have on our team.

But notice Len, it's the students from our school that come to you. Not me. It's the students. They decide. They build and they compete with their creations. That's what gives us the advantage. And why we are heading to nationals again. All i do is nag them about the goals they set.

[Balsa Man]

Some good observations, Erik. Think we’re pretty much on the same page.
What got me started on this topic was the belief that for the building events, because they are open to observation, anyone interested should be able to see/get the scored performance results – examples-MagLev- run distance, run time, mass, predicted time; boom/tower/bridge- mass of structure, weight carried, Grav vehicle-run dist, ramp height, predicted time, distance from target.

Because spectating is allowed, my personal take is anyone within the spectator area(s) should be allowed to take notes, take pictures of what their eyes see. As you allude to, and has been discussed under various event threads, just seeing (including having a photo of what you can see) only gets you concept; its the execution of that concept that matters. I also totally agree with your take on “we know how to beat what we’ve built”- feel free to look at what we have – even try to copy. Over the years, I’ve encouraged our kids to be...open and sharing on what they have built/done (and inquiring of their competitors) for a number of reasons. Talking to other coaches and kids myself, I’ve tried to help that openness. First, and foremost, this pushes them; last year’s secrets/good ideas are out there, and you’re going to have to improve it if you want to stay out in front. Second, it’s consistent with how science and engineering in the real world works-there is the “state of the art”/ “the body of knowledge”- building something that does “x” starts w/ the research and understanding of how others have done that, so far, then the problem becomes how to do it better. Third, encouraging the kids to interact is a good thing in so many ways.

I have the same... profound distaste you reflect for parents/coaches who .....just hand kids the tools for winning. I too, have seen the kids who obviously don’t understand what they have, and that’s sad, because the essence, the value is in the learning process- how to figure out a winning concept, how to turn that into a design, how, with materials and tools, and techniques to turn that onto an operating reality, and how to hone and refine that into ....up to- the level they want to go to.

A big reason as a coach I believe “universal access” to past results is important is to be able to provide guidance....”across the board”- on one hand, to kids that have a limited time and interest level, so they can be guided within those limits to a ”respectable” result; and on the other hand, to kids who say, I really want to go for it this year on this event- “I want to beat Poudre...”, to provide guidance about, “do you really understand what that will take- are you willing to invest the time and focus and intensity it takes to win?”. For the last....number of years, it’s only been a handful each season. The joy I have taken from those years is a) when at the end of the season they reflect on how much harder, and how more work than they thought it would take it turned out to be, and how much they learned along the way, b) being there with them as they figure out the myriad of little challenges and come up with workable solutions, and c) knowing that having experienced what it takes to achieve a high objective they have set for themselves – what it takes to solve a complex problem, and to work at a winning level - they have a tool, that is now part of them, that will help them in the real world for the rest of their lives.

I deeply respect how, over the years, Poudre has been able to nurture and maintain a program where a whole team (even multiple teams) is inspired to work to winning levels. It sets a very high bar. When, in a few building events, our kids get over that bar, and actually beat Poudre, they know they have accomplished something,

[chalker]

We are considering some tweaks to the rules for next year. One involves simplifying the motor / prop restrictions by just limiting the overall size of the prop. Does anyone have any suggestions as to what 'standard' prop sizes are and what limit we should impose?

[Jdogg]

We are considering some tweaks to the rules for next year. One involves simplifying the motor / prop restrictions by just limiting the overall size of the prop. Does anyone have any suggestions as to what 'standard' prop sizes are and what limit we should impose?

Have you considered making ducted motors standard. Just make sure everyone has a ducted motor that fits within the guide-rails of their track. That would make things significantly safer and is fairly easy to do.

[iwonder]

We're using RC Hobby propellers, and the largest I'd feel comfortable with (both for safety and clearance from the track) is a 6"-7" prop. We're using 5" props right now I believe, the smallest I've found these props is 4.5" so that's another thing to note. Standard sizes seem to be 4.5", 5" and then all the way up to 14" or bigger in one inch increments. (diameter measurements)

While we're talking about the rules and propellers... I'm still not sure why the ducted fan limit was imposed, if you don't mind explaining. I remember that it was brought up a while back about performance and that wasn't that cause... I know it's not up to me, but after seeing all the safety problems this year, I'd like to suggest allowing larger ducted fans, or maybe requiring some kind of ducting, just so it's harder to cut fingers/seriously bleed. Just a thought

[gorf250]

We are considering some tweaks to the rules for next year. One involves simplifying the motor / prop restrictions by just limiting the overall size of the prop. Does anyone have any suggestions as to what 'standard' prop sizes are and what limit we should impose?

I'd say six inches is a good max length for propellers. 7 inch fit on the track, but when our vehicle stopped it tilted a little and the propeller broke on the side of the track, flinging pieces across my garage.

[Stingray355]

I hope one of the considerations will be that all of the teams I have talked to are dealing with funding issues. In fact one of our best rivals did not field a team this year because of a lack of funds. In our competitions most teams were using open props. A rule change that would require most teams to scrap their existing parts should be a last resort in my opinion. We still have a bunch of expensive parts left over from the one season run of SumoBots we want to avoid a similar situation.
That said I think some changes to enhance safety are desirable. You already have an effective limitation on prop size, if you look at the size limitations of the device and the track a 7" prop is about the limit. We ran smaller props than that and had issues with clearing the timing gates at every competiton we attended and in fact had one damage our prop during a run. At State we had 1/4"-3/8" prop clearance from the timing devices at best. Some simple changes to the layout would eliminate this problem, ie rotate the 1/8" rod 90 degrees and move the gates well away from the track/device or some other similar simple change.

I think the best solution would be to require automatic shut-down devices that kill the power as the device clears the timing gate. We had some difficulty stopping our device until we added one. Our device weighs 1600+ grams and traveled the 68 cm distance at State in .52 seconds stopping it suddenly /safely without damage was the challenge. Prior to adding the auto shut-off it continued to accelerate until it hit a barrior and cutting the power early really reduced the impact energy. We started looking at a shutoff after having a test end with the prop making contact with the track, it continued to run after stopping and tilted in the track and the prop and track made contact. The result was a severely damaged prop and damage to the chassis.

I think some requirements to better control the stoppping portion of the runs are needed. From the runs I observed most teams are depending on quick action by a team member to shut off a running device with a rapidly spinning propeller inches away from their hands. It is not a very dependable approach. Adding some required automatic shutdown would add little cost to the build and would improve safety.

[erikb]

We are considering some tweaks to the rules for next year. One involves simplifying the motor / prop restrictions by just limiting the overall size of the prop. Does anyone have any suggestions as to what 'standard' prop sizes are and what limit we should impose?

Keeping the wall height from the magnets 2cm or more and the prop size limit of 6-6.5 is a good size since it puts the rotational torque a good distance from the CG. so the kids have to figure out a way to keep the sled stable. The combination this year makes them adjust the weight on the sled so it rolls freely down the track.

Lift the ducted fans restriction. However, i would caution everyone thinking about them. That with brushed motors you will still be at a disadvantage. Because of the length of track, it is a thrust problem not a speed problem to be solved. Ducted motors don't get efficient until they are at speed. And they way this event is laid out. That would be some 20 feet beyond the end of the track.

But ducted fans are safer.

However, the battery is the safety issue. A lipo can dump enough amps to make the propellers dangerous. The kids were cut several times and bruised even with heavy gloves on. At state i made them use flexible propellers even though it cost them points. At nationals they will be using apc composite propellers. APC don't flex or break when they hit a hand, that worries me and their parents.

Limiting the batteries to rechargeable nicd vs nimh batteries with a maximum voltage for the circuit, would make them safer and if they wanted more amps it would be a design and additional weight problem for them to figure out.

Also limiting to rechargeable batteries levels the playing field between the schools with less money, ($19 gets a pack of 20 rechargeables and a recharger at sam's club.) and moves the technical issue from can we afford it, to how do we make it work. The same argument i made with our our state director last year over brushed motors. Allowing Brushless motors would have made the event who can spend the most to win event. Not who can solve the technical problem the most efficiently.

I also like the idea of a sled with a random weight. Like the trials was. I don't like them being able to make 6 runs and be done with testing. Make them work on it like in gravity vehicle.

My final suggestion is to make the time prediction a larger portion of the score. The kids sat down and figured out that .1 off is basically a few points and when they are scoring 3000 or more, they see no need to really work at the time prediction.