Optics B/C

[MehraPir]

Thank you so much. This is great.

[treesdea]

How are you guys preparing for the laser shoot?
I haven't started studying yet but I'm pretty sure there's math involved. I hope it's not just random guessing because that wouldn't be very fun...
Also, it's been a while since I've done a study event. Any general tips from people who've done Optics before or similar events? I mostly mained ID/builds so I'm very rusty on the whole studying thing, haha!

The math is straightforward: angle of incidence = angle of reflection.

The laser is required to be calibrated by the ES so it follows a path down the marked centerline of the apparatus. So in order to hit the target spot, you need to know angle of incidence = angle of reflection, and you need to do some practical geometry.

You can bring premade templates and guides.

I've heard that templates and guides are great for measuring it out but how exactly should you make/obtain them and use them?

[knightmoves]

How are you guys preparing for the laser shoot?
I haven't started studying yet but I'm pretty sure there's math involved. I hope it's not just random guessing because that wouldn't be very fun...
Also, it's been a while since I've done a study event. Any general tips from people who've done Optics before or similar events? I mostly mained ID/builds so I'm very rusty on the whole studying thing, haha!

The math is straightforward: angle of incidence = angle of reflection.

The laser is required to be calibrated by the ES so it follows a path down the marked centerline of the apparatus. So in order to hit the target spot, you need to know angle of incidence = angle of reflection, and you need to do some practical geometry.

You can bring premade templates and guides.

I've heard that templates and guides are great for measuring it out but how exactly should you make/obtain them and use them?

What you make depends on what your plan for arranging the mirrors is. The key is that you have 4 minutes to arrange everything, which isn't very long. So think more in terms of "I need to push the mirror up against this flat edge" and less "I need to carefully align the mirror with this line", because the first thing is faster to do.

[sobrielle]

hey guys,
i've been trying to practice for the laser shoot with my partner, but the laser never seems to end near the target. we use a protractor to measure the angles, but in the end, there always seems to be a few mirrors that are just slightly off, affecting the entire setup. so we were thinking about using a guide, but how does that work exactly? do you just create guides for potential mirror positions? i have no idea how these templates are supposed to work lol

[lorax-loves-trees]

Hi, I find it hard to be consistent on the Laser Shoot and get the angles perfectly (one time I got 25 mm off with 4 mirrors, another time I got 165 mm with only 2 mirrors), so I was considering using a template to save time. I'm not 100% sure what a template is though. Is a template like a sheet of paper that you put in the LSS with markings, if so do you have to make a hole in the middle where the barrier mirror is?

[lorax-loves-trees]

Something that came up during the laser shoot from this past weekend that I wanted to share: Be careful when aligning templates according to the walls or corners of the box rather than the midline. I've seen this most often with teams using triangular templates in the corners to reflect 90 degrees. The walls of the box might warp over time, and corners might not be perfectly perpendicular. If so, it will introduce some degree of error.

The only alignment "guaranteed" in the rules is that the laser is aligned with the midline, so relying on the midline instead could help with accuracy/consistency.